THE  GIFT  OF 

MAY  TREAT  MORRISON 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

ALEXANDER  F  MORRISON 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2008  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/contrastsinsociaOOtenn 


CONTRASTS 


IN 


SOCIAL   PROGRESS 


BY 

Edward  Payson  Tenney,  A.M. 

Sometime  President  of  Colorado  College 


LONGMANS,    GREEN,    AND    CO 

91  AND  93  FIFTH    AVENUE,  NEW    YORK 

LONDON,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 

1907 


COPYRIGHT,  1907.  BY 
EDWARD  PAYSON  TENNEY 


w 


■n 


TO    THE    READER. 

The  classified  facts  and  authorities  presented  in  this  vol- 
ume have  been  gathered  in  many  years  as  a  contribution 
towards  the  practical  settlement  of  certain  questions  in  com- 
parative religion,  mainly  in  application  of  the  principle  of 
natural  selection  and  the  survival  of  the  fittest  to  the  five 
great  religions,  or  systems  of  moral  philosophy,  that  have 
sprung  up  and  gained  wide  sway  over  vast  populations  of 
different  nationalities,  throughout  extended  areas  of  the 
globe,  during  a  period  of  from  two  to  six  scores  of  the  gen- 
erations of  men. 

In  addition  to  the  Author's  indebtedness  to  the  corre- 
spondents referred  to  in  the  text,  he  desires  to  express  his 
gratitude  to  certain  American  scholars : — 

To  George  Foot  Moore,  LL.  D.,  Professor  of  the  History 
of  Eeligion,  in  Harvard  University,  who  read  through  the 
^       entire  manuscript,  making  valued  suggestions; 

To  Duncan  Black  jNIacdonald,  M.  A.,  D.  D.,  Professor 
of  Semitic  Languages  in  Hartford  Theological  Seminary, 
for  the  revision  of  what  relates  to  Islami; 

To  Edward  Washburn  Hopkins,  Ph.  D.,  LL.  D.,  Profes- 
sor of  Sanskrit  in  Yale  University,  for  revising  the  text 
S      pertaining  to  the  Beligions  of  India. 

'i^  To  Professor  John  S.  Sewell,  D.  D.,  of  Bangor,  special 

obligation  is  due  for  most  important  service  rendered  in 
the  Author 's  preliminarj^  studies. 

Fitting  acknowledgment  should  also  be  made   for  the 
^      revision  of  matter  relating  to  Sociological  Conditions : — 

To  E.  A.  Hume,  A.  M.,  of  Ahmednagar ;  to  Dr.  J.  D. 

Davis,  of  Kyoto;  to  William  Ashmore,  D.  D.,  of  Swatow; 

^      and  to  an  eminent  publicist  in  the   Chinese  Empire  for 

pertinent  information  and  courteous  corrections  of  the  text. 

Cambridge,  ]\Lissachusetts. 


428S5S 


ANALYTICAL  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER   ONE:    THE    TIME-TEST    IN   COMPARA- 
TIVE SOCIAL  EVOLUTION. 

Page 

Unity  of  Method  in  Development,  both  Moral  and 

Natural  1 

Moral  Evolution  Throughout  Long  Ages  2 

The  Slov^  Development  of  Civilization  6 
Moral  Evolution  of  Christendom  Illustrated  by 

the  Cosmic  Development  7 
The  Tardy  Unfolding  of  the  Ethnic  Religions  9 
Social  Value  of  Different  Types  in  Moral  Evo- 
lution Tested  by  Time  10 
Relation  of  Ethics  to  Social  Condition  14 
Inherent  Difficulties  of  the  Present  Inquiry  23 

CHAPTER  TWO  :  CONTRASTS  IN  CIVIC  CONDITION. 

Popular  Civic  Liberty  for  Individual  Development  26 

Southern  Asia  26 

The  Japanese  Empire  30 

The  Celestial  Empire,  36 

Islam  44 

The  Christian  Idea  of  a  Universal  Kingdom  of  Love  47 

Hebrew^  Contribution  to  Modern  Civics  50 

Note  upon  "Christian"  Slavery  53 

The  Idea  of  Individual  Responsibility  to  God  55 

Its  Social  Import  56 

The  Moral  Basis  of  Self-Governed  States  57 

Roman  Rule  Christianized  58 

Its  Influence  upon  England  60 


vi  table  of  contents. 

Effect  of  Popularized  Hebrew  Literature  upon 

English  Politics  62 

Self-Governing  Religious  Bodies  and  Civil  Free- 
dom 65 

Christian  Liberty  Regulated  by  Law  67 

Biblical  Ideas  and  a  Genius  for  Self- Government  68 

CHAPTER    THREE:    CONTRASTS    IN    HOME 
BUILDING. 

Influence  of  Heredity  and  Breeding  72 
Illustrated  b}''  the  Jukes-Edwards  Story  72 
Homes  in  Hindustan                                                    74-87 
Physical  Degradation    of    Stock  Through  Child- 
marriage  74 
Inferior  Position  of  Hindu  Womanhood  75 
Sacredness  of  the  Husband  75 
Influence  of  Patriarchal  Family  System  77 
Seclusion  of  Women  78 
Condition  of  Widows  79 
Religious  Sanction  for  Lives  of  Impurity  81 
The  Status  of  Women  as  Affected  by  Female  In- 
fanticide 82 
The  Foregoing  Statements  Qualified  84 
Effect  of  the  Depressed  Condition  of  Motherhood 

on  Hindu  Stock  85 

Buddhist  Homes  87-95 

Relatively  Improved  Condition  of  Womanhood  87 

Primitive  Condition  of  Domestic  Life  in  Siam  88 

Note  upon  Effect  of  Buddhist  Celibacy  on  Racial 

Stock  90 

Women  of  Burmah  •    91 

Womanhood  in  Japan  91 

Confucianist  Homes  95-99 

Ancestral  Worship  as  Related  to  the   Status  of 

Woman  85 


TABLE  OF   CONTENTS.  VU 

Intluence  of  Childhood  Betrothal  and  Mercantile 

Marriage  97 

Effect  of  the  Patriarchal  Family  System  97 

Domestic  Vice,  and  Divorce  98 

Female  Infanticide  98 
Influence  of  Ancestral  Worship  in  Congesting  the 

Population  99 
]\IussuLMAN  Homes                                                      99-107 

The  Legal  Status  of  Women  100 

Child  Marriage  100 

The  Patriarchal  Family  System  100 
Plurality  of  Wives,  Frequent  Divorce,  and  the 

Concubine  Custom  101 
Influence   of   Heredity   and   Training   on   Kacial 

Stock  105 
Counter  Considerations  106 
Christian  Home  Life                                                 107-124 
Qualification  of  the  Foregoing  Statements  Con- 
cerning the  Religions  107 
The  Rise  of  Radically  Different  Conditions  Through 

Christianity  108 
The  Unity  op  Judaic  and  Christian  Ideas  Relat- 
ing to  Womanhood                                          108-120 

Love  as  the  Basis  of  Marriage  109 

Monogamy  111 

Abandonment  of  Arbitrary  Divorce  112 

Divorce  in  Christendom  113 

The  Ideal  of  Domestic  Purity  113 

Note  upon  the  Social  Evil  114 
Development   of  Woman's   Individuality   in   the 

Hebraic,  Early  Christian  and  Mediaeval  Usage  115 

Note  upon  the  Humane  Treatment  of  Widows  116 
Relation  of  the  Christian  Status  of  Woman  to 

AN  Improved  Racial  Stock  120-124 

Influence  of  Physical    and    Mental    Maturity  in 

JMotherhood  121 


VUl  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

Abandonment  of  the  Patriarchal  Family  System  as 

Related  to  an  Improved  Domestic  Stock  122 

Influence  of  Individual  Home  Life  upon  Child- 
hood 123 

CHAPTER  FOUR :  CONTRASTS  IN  EDUCATION. 

Christian  Schooling  125-131 
Hebrew  Instruction  125 
Early  and  Mediaeval  Education  126 
In  the  Reformed  Church  126 
In  the  Modern  Age  127 
Slow   and  Limited  Development  of   Educational 
Plant  in  Christendom  Contrasted  with  Pres- 
ent Activities  129 
Hindu  Education  131-133 
Theory  of  the  Brahraans  131 
Comparative  Illiteracy  131 
The  Education  of  Girls  132 
Buddhist  Instruction  133-138 
Siam  133 
Burmah  135 
Japan  135 
Education  among  the  Conpucianists  138-150 
Confucius  as  a  Representative    of    the    National 

Mind  138-141 

The  Civil  Service  Examinations  141 

Popular  Illiteracy  144 

The  Discipline  of  the  Higher  Education  146 

The  Broadening  Curriculum  146 

A  New  Era  148 

Moslem  Schools  150-156 

Intellectual  Quickening  through  Mohammed  150 

The  Study  of  the  Koran  151 

Illiteracy  of  Moslem  Women  152 

Christian  Education  in  the  Turkish  Empire         152-156 


txvble  of  contents.  ix 

Philanthropic   Extension   of   Christian   Educa- 
tion AS  A  Social  Power  156 
Eelation  of  Moral  Education  to  the  Formation 

OF  Character  158 

Illustrated  in  Borneo  159 

In  the  South  Seas  160 

Pb[ilanthropic     Educational     Service     in    non- 
Christian  Lands  161 
The  Elevation  of  Womanhood  162 
National  Leadership  through   Educational  De- 
velopment                                                                 162 
Outworking  of  Philanthropic  Energy  in  Promot- 
ing Education                                                              163 

CHAPTEE  FIVE:  CONTEASTS  IN  LITEEATUEE. 

Provinclvl  Limitations  in  the  Concept  of  Liter- 
ature 165 
Sanskrit  Literature  166-173 
Intellectual  Supremacy  of  the  Brahman  Caste  167 
Enforcement  of  Caste  Eules  the  Essential  Thing 

in  Hinduism  168 

Literary  Activity  of  the  Hindu  Mind  169 

The  Brahmanical  Scriptures  169-173 

Buddhist  Literature  173-180 

Personality  of  Gautama  173 

His  Spiritual  Enlightenment  174 

Ideal  of  the  Mendicant  Monks  175-178 

Their  Teaching  178 

The  Sacred  Books  179 

Secular  Literature  in  Buddhist  Lands  180 

The  Chinese  Classics  181-185 

Summary  of  their  Teaching  181,  182 

Note  upon  Filial  Piety  182 

Their  Positive  Influence  183 

Literary  Productiveness  of  China  184 


x  table  of  contents. 

Arabic  Literature  185-193 

Personality  of  Mohammed  185 

His  Sincerity  187 

Religious  and  Political  Conquest  188 

Ceaseless  War  against  Infidels  forever  Binding  188 

The  Koran  189 

Other  Literature  192 

Limitations  of  the  Koran  193 
Literature  of  Christianity                                     194-201 

Preponderance  of  Fact  in  the  Bible  194 

Antiquity  of  the  Sacred  Writings  196 
Influence  of  the   Hebrew  Books  upon   Christian  • 

Literature  196 

Intellectual  Effect  of  the  Bible  in  English  198 
Influence  of  Christian  Literature  upon  the  Fine 

Arts  199 
Prose  Literature  in  Christendom  201 
Comparative  Literature  as  an  Educational  In- 
fluence 201 
Literature    of    Christendom    Characterized    by 

Gospel  Ideas  202 

Comparative  Readers  203-205 

Literature  in  Libraries  203 

Circulation  of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  World  204 


CHAPTER  SIX :  CONTRASTS  IN  MORAL  THOUGHT. 

I.  Relating  to  Worship  — the  Idea  of  God  206-224 

Hindu  Ideas  206-212 

The  Buddhist  212-214 

Confucian  215-218 

Moslem  218-220 

The  Judaic  and  Christian  Conception  of  God  220 
The  Tests  of  Natural  Science  and  the  Theology 

of  Nature  222 

Social  Results  of  Theistic  Misconception  223 


TABLE  OP   CONTENTS.  XI 

II.  Relating  to  the  Love  of  God  225-227 
JMoslem  Thought  225 

Babism  226 

Social  Influence  of  the  Idea  of  God's  Love  227 

III.  Relating  to  the  IMoral  Law  228-231 

IV.  The  Nature  of  Mor.vl  Evil  231-238 
Views  Entertained  by  the  Hindus  231 

By  the  Buddhists  235 

Confucian,  Moslem,  Greek  and  Roman  Ideas  236 

The  Christian  Concept  237 

Social  Results  238 

V.  Non-Christian  Views  that  Relate  to  Erad- 

icating Evil  238-254 

Hindu  Theories  of  Illusion,  and  the  Avoidance  of 

Moral  Responsibility  239 

The  Doctrine  of  Repeated  Births,  and  its  Social 

Influence  240 

Buddhist  Transmigration,  and  the  Law  of  Karma        241 
Note  upon  Heredity  245 

The  Theory  of  Accumulating  Moral  ]\Ierit  246 

The  Moslem  Merit  System  ■     246 

Hindu  Salvation  by  Works  248 

Buddhist  Devices  for  Merit  Making  248-254 

VI.  The  Christian  Concept  of  Removing  Moral 

Evil  254-274 

The  Hatred  of  Evil,  as  a  Social  Influence  255 

Social  Effect  of  the  Negations  of  Buddhism  256 

Need  of  a  Supreme  Moral  Governor  in  China  259 
Christian  Self-Consciousness  and  Sense  of  Indi- 
vidual Responsibility  versus  Japanese  Ideas 

and  Chinese  261 

Christian  Ideal  of  Man's  Individuality  263 

Intellectual  Supremacy  of  Conscience  264 
Moral  Amendment  through  Mercy  to  the  Penitent 

and  through  a  Divine  Re-enforcement  266 

The  Epoch  of  Divine  Self-Sacrifice  266 


XU  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

The  Person  of  Jesus  Christ  2G7 

Social  Power  of  the  Christian  Concept  of  Man's 

Renewal  269 

Change  of  Character  not  Required  by  Islam  270 

Sociological  Value  of  Belief  in   a  Divine   In- 
dwelling Energy  272 
Christian  Consciousness                                             273 

VII.  The  Time  Element  in  Forming  Racial  Ten- 

dencies IN  Ethics  274 

VIII.  Social  Effect  of  the  Conception  of  a  Di- 
vine Kingdom  of  Love  with  World-wide 
Sway  277 

IX.  The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  :  or  Final  Release 

FROM  Sin  284 

X.  Permanent  Force  of  the  Ethical  Theories 

that  Permeate  Christian  Literature  285 

The  Unities  of  the  Spirit  286-288 

CHAPTER    SEVEN:    CONTRASTS    IN    ALTRUISTIC 
SERVICE. 

Business  Basis  of  a  World-wide   Philanthropy 
THROUGH  Combinations  of  Thrifty  Chris- 
tian LxiYMEN  289-292 
A.  Contrasts  in  the  Attitude  of  the  Great  Reli- 
gions TOWARD  Labor  292-307 

Importance  of  Material  Well-being  292 
Continental  Industrial  Loss  through  Millions  of 

Sacred  Mendicants  292 

Industrial  Conditions  in  the  Land  of  Confucius  294 

Lack  of  Commercial  Confidence  294 

Poverty  of  Working  ]\Ien  295 

Obstacles  to  Advancement  297 

Hindustan:  Effect  of  the  Caste  System  298 

Note  upon  the  Industrial  Effect  of  the  Patriarchal 

Family  System  298 

Industrial  Improvement  under  Christianity  301 


table  of  contexts.  xiu 

Condition  of  Working  Men  in  Christendom  302 

Note  on  German  State  Insurance  of  Workmen  303 

Contrasts  in  the  Honor  Put  upon  Manual  Labor  304 

Optimism  as  a  Social  Power  305 

Constitution  of  Leading  Races  in  their  Relation 

to  Labor  305-307 

Equality  of  Opportunity  306 

Superior  Vigor  of  Workmen  in  Christendom  306 

Relation  of  Moral  Qualities  to  Industrial  Prosperity     307 

B.  The  Attitude  of  Great  Religions  toward  the 

Relief  of  Poverty  307-332 

The  Hindus  308 

Buddhists  311 

Japan  312 

Confucianists :  313 

Keang-soo  Compared  with  New  York  315 

Hankow  Compared  with  St.  Petersburg  316,  317 

Chinese  Charities  Compared  with  American  317 

Christian  Philanthropy  in  China  317-318 

Islam :  318 

Turkey  Compared  with  Great  Britain  319 

With  Pennsylvania  319 

Constantinople    Compared    with    London,    and 

with  Boston  319,  320 

The  Attitude  of  Christianity:  320-332 

Hebrew,  Roman,  and  Mediaeval  Charities  320 

Early  Municipal  Charities  321 

Charities    of    France    Compared    with    Kwang- 

tung  321-322 

Italy  Compared  with  the  Northwest  Provinces  of 

India  322 

Poor  Relief  in  Germany  322-327 

"Considering"  the  Poor  324 

Westphalia  325 

Chinese  Province  of  Chihli  Compared  with  Eng- 
land 327 


XIV  TABLE  OP  CONTENTS. 

London  Charities  328 

The  Church  of  England,  the  Free  Churches,  and 

the  Nobility  329 

The  Christian  "Women  of  Great  Britain  330-331 

There      should     be     14,000,000     non-Christian 

Women  Devoted  to  Philanthropy  331,  332 

Christian  Philanthropy  in  non-Christian  Realms  332 

CHAPTER  EIGHT:  PARALLELS  AND  CONTRASTS 
IN  SELF-EXTENDING  ALTRUISTIC  POWER. 

Mediaeval  Propagation  of  Christianity  by  a  Com- 
promise WITH  Paganism  333-337 
Advancing  Brotherly  Love  at  the  Point  of  the 

Sword  337-342 

The  Cleansing  Power  of  Persecution  342-344 

The  Proselyting  Power  of  Islam  :  344 

Africa  344r-346 

India  346 

The  Hold  of  Islam  on  its  Votaries  347 

Its  Limitations  349,  350 

Buddhist  Self-Extension  350-363 

The  Sangha, —  or  Monastic  Order  352 

Three  Hindrances  to  Buddhist  Self-Extension     354-358 

The  Adaptation  of  a  Great  Religion  to  a  New  Age    359 

Buddhist    Extension    Compared    with    that    of 

Christianity  in  Japan  .    360 

The  Number  of  Buddhists  in  the  World  361 

Note  upon  the  Three  Religions  of  China  362 

The  Empire  of  Confucius  :  363 

Its  Boundaries  363 

Its  Social  Limitations  363-364 

Extension    of     Christianity    among    the    Lower 

Classes  in  China  364r-366 

Lack  of  Confucian  Missions  366 

Changing  Conditions  and  the  Opportunity  of  the 

Hour  367-368 


table  of  contents.  xv 

Hinduism  :  368 

A  National  Religion  369 

Inherent  Difficulties  in  Propagating  the  System  370 

Weakness  through  Sub-division  371 

Its  Natural  Increase  371 

The  Advance  of  Christianity  in  India  371-377 

Christianity    as    the    World-wide    Kingdom  of 

God:  377-388 
Influence  of  Imperial  Rome  on  the  Christian  Idea 

of  a  Universal  Spiritual  Kingdom  377 

Its  Machinery  for  Self-Propagation  380-384 

Magnitude  of  Its  Work  382 

Statistical  Results  382-384 

The  Social  Advancement  of  Christian  Peoples  384 

Extent  of  the  Christian  Realm  385 

The  Spirit  of  Self-Sacrifice  386-388 

CHAPTER   NINE:   THE    TIME   ELEMENT    IN   THE 
FUTURE  OF  MAN'S  MORAL  EVOLUTION. 

The  Period  of  Present  Cosmic  Conditions  Avail- 
able FOR  Man's  Moral  Evolution  389 
Development  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  390-392 
Speci/Vlists  upon  the  Future  Length  of  the  Cos- 
mic "Age  of  Man,"— and  Note  392,  393 
The  World's  Early  Population  Small  393 
Relation  of  Time  to  the  Future  of  the  Kingdom 

OF  God  393-395 

Illustration  from  the  Geology  of  Chicago  395 

The  Law  of  Progress  in  Systems  of  Faith  and  of 

Morality  397 

The  "Natural"  Development  of  Moral  Power  399 

The  Heroic  Age  of  the  World  400 

The  Working  Together  of  the  Leaders  of  JMan- 

KiND  to  Develop  New  Types  of  Christianity      401 
The  Divine  Psychic  Energy  in  Man  's  Moral  Evo- 
lution 401 


^'^'1  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

APPENDIX 

A.  The  Monks  of  Christendom  402 

B.  The  Decadence  op  Christian  Monasticism  405 

C.  Nirvana  406 

D.  Karma  4O8 


Bibliography  409 


CHAPTER  ONE:  THE   TIME   TEST  IN  COMPARA- 
TIVE SOCIAL  EVOLUTION. 

The  Christian  Scriptures  represent  the  self-revelation  of 
the  Creator  of  the  universe  as  manifest  in  four  forms: 
(i)  in  man's  reason  and  conscience,  to  which  the  Bible 
constantly  appeals  in  set  terms;  (ii)  in  the  providential 
hand  appearing  in  human  history,  which  our  books  illus- 
trate throughout  a  long  term  of  centuries;  (iii)  through 
nature  or  the  things  which  God  has  made;  and  (iv)  in 
our  sacred  literature.  The  Lord  our  God  is  one  Lord, 
whether  he  reveals  himself  in  the  moral  constitution  of 
man,  in  the  course  of  history,  in  literature,  or  in  nature. 
** Speak  to  the  earth,  and  it  shall  teach  thee." 

In  the  divine  creative  work  the  several  parts  appear  to 
be  so  correlated  that  the  method  of  evolution,  which  un- 
questionably availed  in  the  physical  development  of  man, 
seems  to  be  the  law  observed  in  man's  moral  evolution  and 
in  God's  spiritual  kingdom  on  earth.  The  facts  in  the 
unfolding  of  the  moral  powers  of  individual  men  and 
races  of  an  early  type  point  to  a  law  of  parsimony  in  the 
use  of  creative  means  to  an  end,  and  to  a  certain  deliber- 
ateness  in  the  divine  action  toward  reaching  this  end,  as 
if  on  the  part  of  One  unfolding  plans  far  reaching  from 
eternity  to  eternity.  If  the  material  universe  appears  to 
have  been  so  created  as  to  have  seed  within  itself,  or  to 
have  lodged  within  it  the  immanent  divine  energy,  and  to 
develop  by  a  law  or  method  of  divine  action  that  calls  for 
little  direction  or  interference,  how  can  it  be  looked  for 
that  moral  evolution  should  proceed  upon  a  different  plan  ? 
In  the  use,  however,  of  secondary  causes  in  moral  develop- 
ment there  must  be  immeasurable  periods  of  time,  and  it  is 
not  unfitting  that  it  be  so,  in  the  preparation  of  a  morally 


22  TIME    TEST    IN    SOCIAL    EVOLUTION. 

Iferfectecl  Tqc(?  ifj^r:  t-he  occupancy  of  this  globe  during  so 
m'hn'y  ag?s*'to"  c'oftie'as  are  commensurate  with  the  cycles 
•,p4sfc:^:"iy"'^ii'''li.'the  .earth*  has  been  making  ready  for  man. 


If  an  orderly  plan  has  been  carried  on  probably  during 
some  tens  or  scores  of  millions  of  years,  or  during  a  longer 
period,  as  some  would  have  us  think,  in  fitting  our  planet 
for  human  use,  and  if  the  physical  nature  of  man  has 
been,  in  the  divinely  chosen  creative  method,  developed 
and  modified  during  some  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years 
in  qualifying  it  to  become  the  instrument  of  the  intellectual 
and  spiritual  powers  of  man  as  he  appears  in  historic  times, 
we  must  easily  believe  that  man's  moral  nature  has  been 
developed  so  slowly  that  it  is  impossible  to  fix  the  date 
when  moral  responsibility  began  for  the  entire  race  as  such, 
or  to  affirm  in  what  degree  moral  responsibility  attaches 
to  the  most  backward  peoples.  If  the  evolution  of  material 
things  be  by  analogy  the  measure  of  mental  and  moral 
evolution,  is  it  not  probable  that  the  dawn  of  human  con- 
sciousness and  the  development  in  the  animal  man  of  a 
moral  sense  and  a  capacity  for  immortality,  or  such  nature 
as  may  be  properly  held  responsible  for  moral  activity, 
must  have  been  not  only  very  gradual,  but  have  been  differ- 
ent in  degree  in  the  varied  prehistoric  tribes  and  peoples, 
and  in  individuals  of  the  same  racial  stock?  Even  if  man, 
in  our  earliest  definite  knowledge  of  him,  appears  to  have 
been  a  religious  animal  so  far  as  to  have  that  sense  of  rela- 
tionship to  the  unknown,  as  a  controlling  element  in  his 
destiny,  which  specialists  affirm  to  be  the  characteristic 
of  all  men,  yet  the  time  when  a  distinct  moral  consciousness 
appeared  we  cannot  know  any  more  than  we  can  know 
when  embryonic  individual  life  reaches  the  period  of  moral 
responsibility.  It  is  enough  that  at  some  time,  somewhere, 
man  began  to  have  ideas  which  consciously  actuated  him 
in  a  religious  manner,  that  he  might  intelligently  adapt 


MORAL   EVOLUTION.  3 

himself  to  the  conditions  of  his  existence  in  developing 
that  spiritual  nature  which  exists  outside  the  circle  of 
natural  movements  and  apart  from  it, —  so  manifesting  a 
capacity  at  least  for  spiritual  development, —  which  at  its 
highest  and  best  came  finally  to  a  knowledge  of  the 
self-revelation  of  God  in  nature  and  in  the  constitution  of 
man,  and  prepared  the  human  race  at  a  later  period  for 
reading  God's  self-revelation  in  such  spiritual  life  as  came 
to  be  embodied  in  the  most  ancient  sacred  literatures,  and 
prepared  man  to  follow  more  intelligently  the  leadings  of 
the  divine  spirit. 

To  know  for  certainty  so  much  as  this,  we  do  not  need 
to  go  back  to  the  earliest  ages  of  our  race  to  trace  the  story 
in  detail  from  the  birthplace  of  man  through  racial  migra- 
tions, yet  we  may  better  interpret  the  philosophical  and 
religious  phenomena  of  the  last  twenty  or  thirty  centuries 
if  we  express  ourselves  in  such  terms  as  are  commonly  used 
in  treating  of  natural  causation.  Shall  we  not  gain  the 
most  light  if  we  think  of  the  development  of  the  human 
race  early  and  late  as  part  of  that  cosmic  process,  or  fixed 
method,  which  was  selected  by  the  divine  wisdom  for  the 
manifestation  of  divine  energy  and  the  work  of  the  divine 
spirit  through  the  spiritual  instincts  of  man?  Do  we  not 
find  man,  when  slowly  emerging  from  the  darkness  of 
primal  ages,  at  the  very  first  transmitting  ethical  ideas 
from  one  individual  to  another  and  one  generation  to 
another  as  a  heritage  of  cumulative  moral  sentiment  ?  Yet 
no  one  can  read  the  story  of  the  earliest  historic  savagery  — 
as  detailed  by  anthropologists  —  without  thinking  of  the 
men  as  only  a  little  elevated  above  the  brutes  that  perish, 
nor  without  thinking  of  the  early  forms  of  the  great  reli- 
gions —  no  matter  how  crude  —  each  as  the  beginning  of  a 
higher  spiritual  life  for  mankind.  Is  there  not  a  constant 
impression  made  by  the  anthropologists  that  man's  intelli- 
gence, superior  to  that  of  the  highest  brutes,  at  the  first 
only  made  him  a  superior  brute,  with  his  higher  and  more 
spiritual  capacities  avrakened  in  the  slightest  degree? 


4  TIME    TEST    IN    SOCIAL    EVOLUTION. 

The  question  of  the  duration  past  oi  man's  life  on  our 
planet  is  of  no  practical  import  whatever,  whether  this  be 
some  ten  or  twenty-live  thousand  years,  which  seems  most 
probable,  or  an  indefinite  longer  period  —  as  there  certainly 
was  for  some  being  with  the  flesh  and  frame  which  we  now 
know  as  man ;  there  came,  in  any  event,  at  some  period,  a 
new  era.  Instead  of  anthropoid  apes  with  brains  in  size 
one-third  that  of  man,  the  very  lowest  in  the  scale  of  man- 
hood had  upon  first  appearance  brains  at  least  five  sixths 
the  size  of  those  of  modern  civilized  races.  That  is  to  say^ 
"Man's  brain  was  a  structure  developed  in  anticipation  of 
function."  Yet,  in  saying  so  much  as  this,  it  is  not  need- 
ful to  claim  for  preglacial  man  aught  higher  than  spiritual 
capacity,  or  needful  to  moot  the  question  of  man's  natural 
immortality.  As  his  brain  was  developed  in  anticipation 
of  function,  may  not  his  physical  nature  have  been  a  moral 
structure  developed  in  anticipation  of  an  immortal  career, 
which  might  come  to  the  race  or  to  individuals  of  the  race 
whenever  the  spiritual  function  should  become  fully  oper- 
ative at  a  later  period?  As  man's  brain  at  first  was  so 
susceptible  of  development  that  mathematical  calculations 
and  musical  skill  might  come  later  without  having  a  differ- 
ent brain,  so  his  psychical  nature  may  have  been  in  antici- 
pation of  immortality.  The  essential  moral  nature  of  pre- 
historic man,  and  his  inherent  power  of  moral  development, 
stands  by  itself,  and  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  other 
question  of  his  natural  imm.ortalitj''.  A  moral  being  may 
be  subject  to  moral  lav/  and  yet  be  mortal.  Although 
Bishop  Butler's  reasoning  in  regard  to  natural  immortality 
led  him  to  think  that  the  lower  animals  might  also  be 
immortal,^  we  can  but  think  of  quaternary  man  as  no  more 
endowed  with  natural  immortality  than  the  lower  animals ; 
the  man  primeval  being  susceptible  of  spiritual  immor- 
tality, having  an  undeveloped  capacity  for  it  to  be  w^orked 
out  in  subsequent  evolution, — an  endowment  to  be  finally 
partaken  of  by  those  whose  moral  development  puts  thera 
in  the  spiritual  attitude  to  receive  it.  That  such  spiritual 
^Analogy,  p.  37,  Gladstone's  Edition,  Oxford,  1S96. 


MORAL   EVOLUTION.  0 

epoch  was  believed  to  be  reached,  at  least  by  some  portion 
of  the  race,  at  the  indefinable  beginning  of  the  historic  era, 
appears  to  be  clear  from  the  earliest  records  and  traditions 
as  interpreted  by  the  highest  authority. 

However  this  may  have  been,  the  main  contention  is  true 
that  for  the  evolution  of  man's  moral  sense  an  incalculable 
period  of  time  must  have  been  requisite. 

If  unnumbered  cycles  were  needful,  in  the  plan  or 
method  which  divine  wisdom  adopted,  for  perfecting  the 
platform  upon  which  man  could  appear,  and  in  providing 
for  his  use  the  fruits  of  field  and  forest  and  fruits  of  the 
chase,  must  we  not  look  for  the  passage  of  unnumbered 
ages  in  the  divine  perfecting  of  the  spiritual  creation  ?  If 
the  world  was  long  the  seat  of  merely  natural  powers,  as 
cohesion,  attraction,  and  crystalline  forces,  or  if  the  lowest 
forms  of  vegetable  and  animal  life,  if  the  overhanging 
precipice  in  the  mountains  was  worn  away  by  the  roots  of 
lichens  at  work  upon  its  face  during  thousands  of  years,  if 
minute  grains  of  granite  were  borne  to  the  wheat  fields, 
whose  harvest  should  sometime  wave  just  outside  the  shadow 
of  the  rocky  ranges  of  the  earth, —  if  such  preparation  of  the 
■earth  for  man  has  occupied  time  inconceivable,  we  must  be 
prepared  for  the  presentation  in  our  Sacred  Books  of  such 
natural  symbols  as  the  seed  grain  or  tree  growths,  the  bring- 
ing forth  of  the  bud,  or  the  springing  of  a  garden,  to 
■express  the  slow  and  sure  development  of  the  divine  king- 
■dom  in  the  earth.  The  impression  made  by  the  analogies 
of  nature,  used  in  the  parables  of  our  Lord  and  in  the 
hortations  of  the  Hebrew  prophets,  leads  us  to  believe  that 
there  is  a  uniform  law,  that  even  if  the  power  which  builds 
a  bud  can  finish  it  in  a  moment,  yet  the  earth  is  long  bare 
of  blossoms,  and  that  the  divine  energies  await  the  slow 
movement  of  secondary  causes  until  the  set  time  of  flowers. 
"Did  not  the  early  singers  of  our  faith  constantly  set  forth 
the  similitude  of  God's  earth  to  indicate  his  processes  in  the 
spiritual  world,  his  covenant  with  the  mountains  and  the 
rain  symbolizing  the  triumph  of  his  moral  purpose? 


b  TIME    TEST    IN    SOCIAL    EVOLUTION. 

II. 

If  it  seemed  "good"  to  the  First  Cause  of  all  things,  that 
the  orderliness  of  creation  should  be  brought  forth  in  pro- 
cesses extending  through  periods  of  time  that  reach  back 
into  the  "frontiers  of  eternity,"  and  if  the  human  race  is 
at  this  moment  so  near  the  beginning  of  its  historic  develop- 
ment,—  with  a  record  of  only  fifty  centuries  behind  it  of 
intellectual  and  moral  life,  and  a  period  one  or  two  hundred 
times  as  long  for  the  evolution  of  its  animal  powers,  as  if 
the  moral  world  had  just  sprung  into  being, —  how  can  it 
but  be  looked  for  that  the  history  of  civilization  should 
show  the  same  slow  and  uneven  course  of  development  with 
which  we  are  made  familiar  in  the  story  of  evolution  in 
the  natural  world? 

So  unsteady  has  been  the  upward  advance  of  our  race 
that  the  Yery  term  civilization  has  been  ill  understood : — 
often  so  defined  as  to  be  applicable  to  the  simple  industries 
and  unique  government  of  the  Iroquois,  or  to  any  rude, 
inhumane,  morally  unsympathetic  people,  if  at  the  fore  in 
useful  arts,  commercial  enterprises,  and  even  in  war ;  appli- 
cable to  the  voluptous,  the  vicious,  the  frivolous,  if  at  the 
fore  in  a  social  refinement  of  the  tailor  and  milliner  type; 
if  applicable,  how  incompletely  so,  to  peoples  with  civilized 
roads  and  barbaric  sports,  eminent  in  the  fine  arts  and 
savage  toward  criticism  in  morals.  Is  "civilization"  a 
term  of  little  value?  Is  it  greatly  improved  by  coupling 
it  with  that  other  term,  ' '  culture, ' '  itself  so  broad,  so  vague, 
so  ill-defined?  What  is  the  boasted  civilization  of  man? 
Must  answers  vary?  Should  it  be  restricted  merely  to  a 
low  degree  of  civic  orderliness,  to  a  convention  of  forms,  to 
industrial  cooperation,  to  skill  in  handling  natural  laws  for 
social  convenience  and  material  prosperity?  Were  it  accu- 
rate to  speak  of  civilization  as  mainly  mechanical,  how 
should  we  classify  the  systematic  development,  through  dis- 
cipline, of  the  intellectual  and  moral  capacities  of  great 
peoples, —  the  unfolding  of  the  national  mind,  the  exalta- 


CIVILIZATION.  i 

tion  of  the  spiritual  over  the  material,  and  the  triumphant 
development  of  man's  inward  power? 

How  can  our  human  history  be  understood,  unless  our 
most  advanced  as  well  as  our  most  backward  nationalities 
are  placed  against  the  background  of  that  low  animal  career 
from  which  the  race  sprang,  and  which  has  left  the  mark 
of  the  beast  upon  all  mankind  ?  Nor  can  we  reconcile  with 
the  highest  reason  what  must  appear  as  moral  madness  and 
confusion  in  the  history  of  the  so-called  human  civilization, 
unless  we  can  discover  in  it  a  divine  plan  and  purpose,  like 
a  traceable  ocean  current  or  ill-defined  but  resistless  under- 
tow amid  all  its  turbulent  tides. 

III. 

Might  not  the  spiritual  evolution  of  Christendom  —  in 
root  and  branch  and  fruit  —  be  well  illustrated  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  physical  nature,  and  the  development  of  prehistoric 
man?  Were  the  scope  of  this  book  such  as  to  admit  of  it, 
seven  ages  of  cosmic  evolution  could  be  easily  depicted  in 
following  the  lines  of  the  matchless  popular  statement  of 
the  development  theory  in  Genesis, —  with  God  behind  it  or 
immanent  in  it,  according  to  the  most  rigid  scientific  studies 
of  to-day;  and,  in  comparison,  seven  ages  of  the  slow  and 
seemingly  wayward  moral  evolution  of  Christendom.  "Were 
this  to  be  done,  it  would  illustrate  what  must  be  anticipated 
in  tracing  the  relatively  backward  development  of  all  the 
great  ethnic  religions. 

Do  not  the  earliest  recorded  strata,  embedded  like  leaves 
in  our  Sacred  Books,  antedating  the  knowledge  of  Greece 
and  Eome  and  substantiated  here  and  there  by  excavations 
upon  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  refer  to  the  outermost  verge 
of  historic  times  wdien  moral  darkness  wrapt  the  world? 
How  fitly  could  such  an  era  be  figured  by  that  creative 
epoch  w^hen  a  dim  light  first  dawned  upon  the  waters.  Yet 
the  eons  of  man  primeval  —  of  the  giants  which  so  quaintly 
appear  in  the  ancient  Hebrew  etymology, —  were  no  more 
wasted  than  the  w^eary  ages  when  the  hesitating  and  doubt- 


58  TIME    TEST   IN    SOCIAL    EVOLUTION. 

ful  evenings  and  mornings  were  new  to  the  earth.  Could 
an  observer  of  the  works  of  God  have  been  standing  upon 
the  Laurentian  hills  in  that  era,  awaiting  the  completion  of 
the  world,  how  little  could  he  have  understood  that  "God's 
work  must  take  God's  time," — a  truth  easily  applicable  to 
the  densely  obscure  ages  of  the  earliest  recorded  time.  In 
both  the  physical  preparation  of  the  earth  for  man  and  in 
the  beginning  of  his  exercise  of  moral  faculties,  the  eras 
were  but  prophetic;  neither  the  moral  possibilities  of  the 
race  nor  the  cosmic  changes  in  the  universe  about  us  being 
fulfilled  in  any  short  period  of  time. 

How  then  can  it  be  otherwise  than  that  the  earliest  moral 
ideas  native  to  man  should  have  been  rude  and  relatively 
imperfect  during  the  long  succession  of  ages  of  patriarchal 
life  in  southern,  eastern,  and  western  Asia?  And  when 
there  came  an  hour  in  which,  according  to  the  Hebrew 
story,  the  founder  of  their  people  believed  that  he  had  a 
divine  call  to  separate  himself  from  his  moral  surroundings, 
it  but  accords  wdth  the  analogy  of  cosmic  evolution  if  it 
proved  to  be  a  moral  day-dawn  rather  than  perfect  day. 
"Whether  or  not  the  patriarchal  chronology  was  fixed  before 
the  Exodus  is  not  important ;  the  long  semi-barbaric  period 
that  is  involved  in  the  story  of  Israel  in  the  wilderness  and 
in  the  land  of  promise  throws  light  upon  the  earlier  gener- 
ations of  their  people.  And  the  monumental  moral  perver- 
sity —  perverting  from  the  ideal  standpoint  —  of  the  Jew- 
ish nation  during  the  forty-five  generations  of  their  national 
life  is  recorded  in  their  historic  and  prophetic  books.  Yet 
the  moral  truth  made  manifest  in  those  generations  has 
proved  to  be  of  solid  service  to  the  social  world  since ;  as 
the  lifting  of  the  vapors  that  overhung  the  earth  and  the 
appearance  of  vast  bodies  of  dry  land,  in  the  early  geo- 
logical ages,  greatly  advanced  the  cosmic  evolution. 

And  if,  after  the  Christian  era  when  the  Light  of  the 
World  appeared  as  the  sun  to  rule  the  day,  there  followed 
ages  of  relatively  low  moral  life,  reptilian  or  brutal,  the 
generations  were  yet  vastly  superior  to  all  the  earlier  ages 
of  man. 


CHRISTENDOM. 


IV. 


If  the  time  element  is  important  in  moral  evolution  as  it 
is  in  the  cosmic  processes,  we  cannot  do  otherwise  than  con- 
sider all  the  great  ethnic  philosophies  and  religions  of  the 
globe  in  the  light  of  age-long  development ;  nor  can  we  other- 
wise understand  their  relation  to  the  world's  social  con- 
dition at  the  present  time.  The  beginnings  of  Brahmanism 
at  its  earliest  and  purest,  and  the  ideas  upon  which  Con- 
fucianism w^as  based,  certainly  run  back  to  the  primary- 
period  in  India  and  China.  These  systems  perpetuate  some 
of  the  earliest  forms  of  thought,  as  if,  in  these  present  day 
religions,  primitive  man  at  his  best  w^ere  still  with  us  in  the 
elevated  conceptions  that  appear  in  the  early  Vedas,  and 
in  that  standard  of  morals  for  the  conduct  of  life  which 
Confucius  found  in  the  earliest  sages  of  his  people.  In  any 
extended  examination  of  the  details  of  the  development  of 
the  three  great  religions  that  occupied  the  attention  of  men 
before  the  Christian  era  and  that  still  survive,  we  can  but 
think  of  them  as  the  manifestation  of  a  moral  evolution 
that  follows  closely  the  analogy  of  the  cosmic  process  or 
established  order  chosen  by  the  Creator,  in  which  there  was 
a  coming  and  going  of  untold  numbers  of  individual  lives 
that  had  little  distinctive  right  to  be  called  religious  in  any 
elevated  sense. 

If  the  religious  cult,  that  differentiated  itself  from  that 
of  Assyria  and  Egypt  through  the  worship  of  Jehovah,  was 
advanced  through  a  people  stiff-necked,  rebellious,  blind, 
fanatical,  from  the  prophetic  point  of  view;  and  if  the 
moral  evolution  denominated  Christian  by  our  early  and 
medieval  historians  was  age  after  age  characterized  by 
forms  of  life  that  constantly  recall  the  crude  moral  code  of 
the  earliest  peoples ;  so,  too,  in  the  study  of  formative  Bud- 
dhist, Brahmanic,  or  Chinese  thought,  we  can  but  find  our- 
selves in  ceaseless  contact  with  what  is  rude  and  elemental 
in  moral  evolution.  Is  it  not  the  story  of  man  with  a 
capacity  for  spiritual  life  and  an  immortal  destiny,  but  in 


10  TIME    TEST    IN    SOCIAL    EVOLUTION. 

many  respects  not  far  removed  from  the  prehistoric  races? 
Do  not  the  details  of  Hindu  and  Chinese  social  life  to-day, 
as  depicted  in  characteristic  sketches  by  literary  artists  who 
have  lived  many  years  among  the  common  people  of  south- 
ern and  eastern  Asia,  certainly  give  the  impression  that  the 
average  man  among  them  is  not  greatly  removed  from  the 
type  of  early  men  pictured  by  anthropologists?  If  one 
reads  several  of  these  books  upon  man  primeval,  then  at 
once  reads  those  relating  to  village  life  in  China  and  India,^ 
will  it  not  appear  that  the  superior  intelligence  of  the  mod- 
ern man  has  often  served  only  to  make  him  a  little  more- 
capable  along  the  lines  of  a  distinctively  brutal  life  ?  And 
if  we  turn  to  Christendom  and  the  Moslem  world,  may  not 
the  same  thing  be  said  of  multitudes,  whose  moral  powers 
have  been  little  developed? 

V. 

If  we  think  to  detect  shades  of  difference  in  the  social 
development  of  the  varied  peoples  among  whom  the  great 
religions  have  had  the  largest  acceptance  in  the  world  dur- 
ing many  ages,  it  will  be  too  much  to  hope  that  differences 
in  the  present  day  social  fruits  can  be  traced  to  a  difference 
in  their  roots,  but  if  a  radical  unlikeness  is  found  in  them, 
it  will  be  for  thoughtful  men  to  inquire  in  what  direction, 
will  be  found  most  hope  for  the  future  of  mankind. 

It  is  no  part  of  the  purpose  of  this  book  to  enter  into  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  obscure  ultimate  causes  of  present  day  social 
phenomena,  whether  economical  or  religious :  to  debate  these 
matters  would  be  like  entering  the  lists  as  to  the  origin  of 
the  moral  sense,  or  to  question  whether  altruism  has  come 
to  its  rightful  place  only  through  ages  of  philosophical 
observation  upon  the  retroactive  advantage  of  unselfish 
deeds  to  the  individual,  and  incidentally  its  social  helpful- 
ness. The  present  inquiry  rather  deals  with  such  results 
as  appear  to  be  connected  with  obvious  causes;  without 
mooting  academic  questions  in  themselves  interesting  and 
important,  but  in  their  present  stage  unconclusive. 


SOCIAL    VALUES.  H 

If  there  are  sanguine  social  students  who  hope  soon  to 
settle  all  questions  that  pertain  to  the  beginnings  of  society, 
to  ascertain  what  are  the  primal  ideas,  how  they  came  into 
being,  and  the  procession  of  their  natural  order,  they  may 
reach  their  desire  as  soon  as  the  biologists  who  seek  to  solve 
the  question  of  life  itself,  in  what  it  consists,  and  its  ulti- 
mate origin.  Meantime  the  inquiry  made  in  this  book  can- 
not fail  of  appearing  to  be  at  fault,  insomuch  as  it  will  not 
seek  to  determine  whether  religious  ideas  precede  or  follow 
certain  other  phases  of  man's  advancement,  or  whether 
religious  thought  is  the  cause  or  the  effect  of  the  civic, 
domestic,  and  economic  phenomena  observed  in  social  evolu- 
tion. The  contention  is  rather  that,  in  the  development 
of  our  race,  certain  pristine  religions  have  been  preserved 
during  vast  periods  of  time,  through  the  long  continuance 
of  organized  society  and  relatively  undisturbed  political 
cohesion,  and  that  the  experience  of  great  peoples,  through- 
out all  these  generations,  has  shown  that  in  respect  to  indi- 
vidual civic  condition,  and  the  status  of  the  home  and  the 
education  of  youth,  in  the  formation  of  literature  and  the 
evolution  of  moral  ideas,  in  philanthropic  service  and  power 
of  growth,  five  great  religions  have  run  a  race  side  by  side, 
and  it  is  now  a  fair  subject  of  inquiry  as  to  the  character 
of  the  civilizations  that  have  been  bound  up  with  them,  and 
this  inquiry  need  not  be  confused  or  diverted  by  interrupt- 
ing its  course  through  mooting  the  totally  different  question 
whether  the  religion  w-as  causal  of  the  social  condition  or 
the  effect  of  it.  Yet  the  main  inquiry  can  but  reveal,  at 
many  points,  w^hat  appear  to  be  prima  facie  causes  and 
effects,  through  the  inter-relation  of  this  religion  or  that 
and  the  local  social  condition. 

During  periods  varying  perhaps  from  forty  generations^ 
to  a  hundred,  the  national  and  social  leaders  of  Moslem 
and  of  Buddhist  lands,  and  of  India  and  China,  who  have 
constantly  shaped  and  modified  the  civic  and  domestic  con- 
dition of  the  common  people,  training  their  youth,  deciding 
their  relations  to  literature  and  moral  thought  and  their 


12  TIME    TEST    IN    SOCIAL    EVOLUTION. 

inter-relation  in  mutual  helpfulness,  have  been  themselves 
the  creators,  shapers,  or  modifiers  of  the  native  religion ;  or 
they  have  been, —  through  heredity,  through  environment, 
•and  through  their  own  individual  culture, —  so  far  shaped 
and  modified  by  local  religious  influences  as  well  as  secular, 
that  the  resultant  social  condition  of  the  common  people 
has  been  throughout  interpenetrated  by  the  causal  moral 
power  of  the  local  religion,  as  well  as  by  local  economic 
•agencies,  and  other  efficient  forces  most  diverse. 

Were  we  to  inquire  in  what  relations  the  Brahmans  stand 
to  the  story  of  human  freedom,  to  the  domestic  life  of  the 
common  people,  to  education,  to  art  and  literature,  to  dis- 
tinctive religious  thought,  to  philanthropy  or  brotherly  love 
among  men,  and  to  possible  instrumentalities  for  its  own 
self-extension  in  the  earth;  then,  were  we  to  test  in  like 
manner  Buddhist,  Confucianist,  Mohammedan,  and  Chris- 
tion,  we  should  have  at  once  concrete  exhibits  which  no 
philosophical  abstractions  could  nullify.  And  for  the  pres- 
ent purpose  it  is  not  needful  to  determine  in  every  case 
how  far  the  outcome  is  strictly  derivable  from  early  reli- 
gious and  philosophical  thought,  or  whether,  in  part,  the 
present  fruitage  is  from  roots  economic,  or  otherwise  inde- 
pendent of  moral  theories  and  practice. 

Considered  from  a  sociological  point  of  view,  we  find 
bound  up  in  the  same  bundle  with  Confucianist,  Brahman, 
Buddhist,  Moslem,  or  Christian  philosophical  and  religious 
thought,  a  certain  relation  to  civil  liberty,  the  home,  child-  ■ 
"training,  literature  and  art,  theories  on  the  moral  conduct 
'of  life,  altruism  and  self-propagating  power :  and  the  social 
'cult  as  such  is  to  be  taken  as  a  whole  and  judged  of  in  its 
totality,  as  of  an  advanced  or  a  backward  type;  the  prac- 
tical question  being  in  what  direction  lies  the  future  hope 
of  mankind.  It  is  like  the  legal  contest  between  Choate 
and  Webster  on  the  ear- wheels:  Choate  pleading  finespun 
distinctions  to  show  that  his  client  did  not  infringe  on  a 
patent,  and  Webster  saying  to  the  jury,  ''There  are  the 
wheels,  look  at  them." 


SOCIAL   VALUES.  13: 

It  is  within  the  scope  of  this  book  to  point  the  reader  ta 
the  civic  and  domestic  condition  of  the  realms  where  the 
five  great  religions  have  held  the  longest  sway,  to  their 
intellectual  development,  to  their  artistic  and  literary  influ- 
ence, their  most  obvious  moral  theories  and  practices,  their 
relation  to  self-abnegation  for  the  good  of  others,  and  their 
purposes  and  activities  for  the  control  of  the  whole  world ; 
and  to  point  the  reader  to  the  time  element  involved,  which 
shows  conclusively  that  there  is  some  vital  and  relatively 
uniform  connection  between  the  different  elements  that  go 
to  make  up  the  social  state  of  a  given  people,  even  if  we 
cannot  tell  precisely  in  a  given  case  whether  the  religious 
ideas  are  cause  or  effect, —  that  they  are  at  one,  age  after 
age,  is  enough. 

As  to  the  period  for  this  inquiry,  Brahmanism  and  Con- 
fucianism antedate  the  Christian  era  by  many  centuries; 
and  Buddhism  by  five  hundred  years,  and  more  in  some 
of  its  features ;  and  both  Mohammedanism  and  Christianity 
are  linked  with  the  rise  of  Judaism.  Practically,  we  have 
twelve  Moslem  centuries ;  twice  that  period  for  the  Buddhist 
test;  perhaps  eight  or  ten  centuries  longer  for  the  Brah- 
man, and  for  testing  the  fruits  that  have  come  to  Chris- 
tianity through  the  Hebrews;  and  the  first  intimation  of 
historic  thought  in  China  is  the  earliest  of  all.  So  that 
we  have  time  enough  in  which  to  trace  the  outcome  of  the 
great  social  cults  in  which  these  philosophical  and  religious 
systems  exercise  predominating  power.  The  story  of  the 
ancient  ages  of  human  history  can  surely  be  read  as  well, 
at  least,  as  the  geological  record  of  the  earth's  making. 
We  know  without  cavil  that  China  has  been  dominated  by 
Confucius  for  more  than  seventy  generations  of  men,  that 
Gautama  has  reigned  as  long,  that  Brahmanical  ideas  and 
the  Judaic  have  controlled  the  lives  of  untold  millions  dur- 
ing milleniums  of  history,  and  that  Christianity  and  ]\Ioham- 
medanism  have  seized  upon  extended  peoples  and  wrought 
through  them  age  after  age, —  surely  now,  if  ever,  we  may 
know  well  enough  for  all  practical  purposes  what  their 


14  TIME    TEST    IN    SOCIAL    EVOLUTION. 

leading  ideas  are  which  affect  civic  and  domestic  life.  Nor 
is  it  needful  to  catch  and  label  every  prehistoric  or  antique 
custom,  civic  and  domestic,  and  set  this  and  that  one  aside 
as  having  nothing  to  do  with  the  proper  conterminous  reli- 
gious ideas.  The  main  facts  are  clear :  the  co-existence 
among  the  same  peoples,  for  ages  upon  ages,  of  certain 
social  phenomena  with  certain  moral  philosophies  and  reli- 
gions; an  on-sweeping  or  stagnated  life  —  of  elementary- 
ideas  indisguishable  in  their  connections,  but  well  known 
as  Chinese,  Hindu,  Moslem,  or  Christian. 

VI. 

So  intimate  is  the  correlation  of  the  intellectual  and  the 
moral  powers  of  man, —  his  moral  ideas  and  conduct  being 
but  the  direction  of  his  intellect  to  moral  ends, —  that  even 
if  one  seeks  to  make  primarily  no  theological  inquiry,  and 
to  avoid  controversy  as  to  what  religion  is  intrinsically  best 
for  mankind, —  in  no  wise  to  affirm  that  Christianity  is  the 
purest  and  the  only  divine  religion,  in  no  wise  to  gloss  over 
the  gross  moral  defects  of  Christendom, —  and  if  one  solely 
seeks  for  such  ideas  as  bear  upon  social  relations,  asking 
what  has  produced  the  ingrained  Hindu  or  Chinese  char- 
acter and  society  as  we  know  them  to-day,  or  what  has 
wrought  in  making  Mohammedan  and  Christian  and  Bud- 
dhist states  what  they  are  now  politically  and  socially, 
nevertheless,  if  we  inquire  for  the  grounds  of  such  social 
results  as  we  see  after  age-long  and  world-wide  experiments, 
it  will  be  seen  that  silently  and  swiftly,  year  after  year, 
certain  forecasting  ideas,  well  known  as  to  their  effects  in 
history,  have  been  at  work  that  have  affected  home  life 
decade  after  decade,  ideas  that  relate  to  the  education  and 
training  of  youth  generation  after  generation,  that  pertain 
to  governments  century  after  century,  that  manifest  them- 
selves in  literature  age  after  age,  ideas  that  affect  the  politi- 
cal and  social  equality  of  men,  ideas  which  outwork  in 
philanthropic  activities  and  in  well-defined  religious  senti- 
ments and  in  power  for  self-propagation  during  the  millen- 


ETHICS.  15 

iums  of  the  world's  life.  The  story  of  Egypt,  of  Babylon, 
of  Assyria,  of  Greece,  of  Eome,  of  Gaul,  of  Germany,  and 
of  the  modern  peoples,  together  with  the  unfolding  life  of 
ancient  Arabia,  of  Hindustan,  and  China, —  what  are  all 
these  fascinating  histories  but  the  revelation  of  ideas  in 
life,  philosophical  and  religious  abstractions  in  concrete 
form?  If  not  in  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  current  hour,  then 
in  the  tidal  inset  of  myriads  of  moons,  noiseless  and  resist- 
less, we  find  the  logical  outcome  of  the  moral  ideas  that 
liave  possessed  great  masses  of  mankind,  and  —  through 
heredity  and  environment  —  made  national  life  and  society 
what  they  are  to-day  in  different  parts  of  the  world. 

' '  This  is  the  most  certain  of  all  the  laws  of  man 's  nature, 
that  his  conduct  will  in  the  main  be  guided  by  his  moral 
and  intellectual  conviction."^  All  human  society,  accord- 
ing to  J.  Stuart  Mill,  is  grounded  on  a  system  of  funda- 
mental opinions:  "To  say  that  men's  intellectual  beliefs 
do  not  determine  their  conduct,  is  like  saying  that  the  ship 
is  directed  by  the  steam  and  not  by  the  steersman ;  it  is  the 
steersman 's  will  and  knowledge  which  decide  in  what  direc- 
tion it  shall  go. ' '  That  is,  the  intellect  directs  the  conduct. 
"According  to  M.  Comte, "  says  Mill,  "the  main  agent  iu 
the  progress  of  mankind  is  their  intellectual  development." 
This  is  because  the  intellect  is  "the  guiding  part"  of  our 
nature.  "Hence  the  history  of  opinions,  and  of  the  specu- 
lative faculty,  has  always  been  the  leading  element  in  the 
history  of  mankind.  "- 

May  it  not  then  be  assumed  that  religious  theories  and 
practices  are  likely  to  be  a  prominent  —  if  not  predomi- 
nant —  factor  in  so  shaping  the  conduct  of  life  as  power- 
fully to  affect  the  social  condition  of  great  peoples ;  all  that 
great  bodies  of  men  do,  through  community  of  interest,  in 
satisfying  the  demands  of  human  nature  —  the  industrial, 
political,  intellectual  and  ethical  development  of  man  in  the 
aggregate, —  being  measurably  wrought  upon  by  religious 
forces. 

^Argyle's  Reign  of  Law,  p.  432.     London,  1867. 

^Mill's  Essay  on  Comte,  pp.  100-102,  104.     London,  1S65. 


16  TIME    TEST   IN    SOCIAL    EVOLUTIOK. 

Adopting  Jastrow's  definition  of  religion  —  as  the  natural 
belief  in  a  power  or  powers  beyond  our  control  upon  whom, 
we  feel  ourselves  dependent,  which  prompts  us  to  organiza- 
tion, to  specific  acts,  and  to  the  regulation  of  conduct,  in 
order  to  establish  favorable  relations  between  ourselves  and 
the  power  in  question,^ —  we  cannot  conceive  of  religion  as. 
having  other  than  certain  theoretical  beliefs  and  a  practical 
outlook.-  Religion,  in  this  way,  acts  upon  a  man  through, 
his  own  higher  reason ;  and  individual  freedom  is  regulated 
by  moral  considerations.  By  changing  the  internal  man  — 
the  intellectual,  the  moral  —  society  itself  is  affected  by  the 
relative  adhesion  of  a  people  to  their  own  sense  of  right. 

"It  is  as  real  a  power  that  changes  a  savage  or  lifts  a, 
ruffian  into  moral  manhood,"  it  is  said  by  Storrs,  "as  that 
power  which  tunnels  a  mountain  or  makes  a  bullet  traverse 
the  air;  and  it  is  as  real  a  power  that  lifts  up  a  tribe  into 
civilized  society,  into  moral  aspiration,  into  the  dignity  of 
moral  character,  as  is  the  power  which  sends  steamships  out 
upon  the  sea,  or  which  transforms  a  bar  of  iron  into  steel.  "^ 

If,  therefore,  we  connect  the  Five  Great  Religions  with 
the  Social  Condition  of  the  Common  People,  it  is  only  to 
affirm  that  among  the  formative  influences  that  shape 
society  the  dominant  religion  of  a  country  is  a  prominent 
power,  directly  and  indirectly  promoting  human  progress 
or  so  holding  the  multitudes  in  thrall  as  to  hinder  their 
advancement.  Not  to  anticipate  the  countless  illustrations 
that  will  easily  recur  to  the  merest  tyro  in  history,  note,  for 
example,  such  a  broad  fact  as  the  powerfully  constructive 
social  force  of  the  predominantly  religious  character  of  the 
Hindu  peoples;  or  note  the  far  reaching  beneficent  influ- 
ences of  Buddhism  when  it  was  a  new  sociological  power  in 
the  ancient  East ;  or  the  new  formulation  of  antique  thought 
and  crystallization  of  custom  by  Confucius;  or  note  the 
social  revolution  wrought  in  the  Roman  empire  by  the  intro- 
duction of  the  idea  of  love  as  a  principle  of  conduct  among; 

^The  Study  of  Religion,  pp.  171,  172;  130.     London,  1901. 

Ubid. 

*Our  Day,  Vol.  VI,  p.  36G.     Richard  S.  Storrs,  LL.  D. 


ETHICS.  17 

men ;  the  uplifting  tribal  transformations  wrought  by  Mos- 
lem thought,  and  the  amazing  changes  that  came  through 
Saracen  conquests  and  the  Christian  crusades;  or  note  the 
development  of  new  civic  and  social  world-powers  through 
some  generations  of  contending  for  religious  freedom;  or 
the  moral  power  that  rises  over  against  materialism,  to-day, 
in  the  philanthropies  of  the  modern  age. 

Yet,  so  far  to  analyze  the  efficient  causes  of  the  world's 
advancement  as  to  pronounce  with  certainty  upon  them,  to 
set  them  apart  and  say  of  one  —  This  is  a  religious  cause,  or, 
This  is  secular, —  must  be  so  difficult  in  a  complex  civiliza- 
tion as  to  be  practically  impossible.  As  men  act  from  mixed 
motives,  there  is  also  an  interaction  between  the  elements 
that  enter  into  the  progressive  movement  of  any  great 
people;  purely  economic  causes  cooperating  with  philo- 
sophical ideas  to  elevate  social  condition,  while,  among  the 
accumulated  influences,  literature  and  religion  are  aided  by 
utilitarian  art  and  science. 

So  complex,  indeed,  are  the  so-called  causes  of  social 
advancement  that  they  are  often,  with  much  show  of  reason, 
confounded  with  the  effects  of  the  social  uplift. 

Let  him  who  will,  undertake  accurately  to  weigh  the 
influences  upon  human  destiny  that  have  been  exercised  by 
the  geological  distribution  of  coal  and  iron  and  the  precious 
metals,  or  by  those  conformations  of  physical  geography 
which  have  decided  the  location  of  great  cities. 

Then,  too,  in  social  development,  who  shall  unravel  the 
mixed  motives  which  have  eventuated  in  the  great  ethnic 
movements, —  such  as  the  peopling  of  Hindustan ;  or  the 
barbaric  waves  that  broke  over  southern  Europe;  the  for- 
eign occupancy  of  the  isle  of  Great  Britain ;  the  early  colo- 
nization of  America,  and  the  subsequent  emigrations  to  a 
new,  arable  continent. 

How  incalculable,  too,  in  social  evolution  have  been  such 
forces  as  pertain  to  the  natural  man  —  a  wild  barbaric  love 
of  independence,  individual  prowess,  unique  capacity  for 
2 


18  TIME    TEST    IN    SOCIAL    EVOLUTION, 

leadership,  or  a  richly  endowed  spirit  of  adventure  vv^hich 
effects  national  rivalry  by  land  and  by  sea. 

Who,  moreover,  can  overstate  the  influence  of  war 
upon  civilization,  changing  quickly  the  social  condition  of 
extended  areas  of  the  world  —  as  in  the  Alexandrine  con- 
quests, the  Roman,  the  Napoleonic,  or  wars  for  national 
independence  and  national  unity,  or  the  recent  epoch-mak- 
ing wars  of  eastern  Asia. 

And  in  man's  intellectual  development  no  one  thinks  of 
anything  religious  in  the  invention  of  alphabetical  writing, 
of  the  so-called  Arabic  numerals,  and  of  printing,  which 
have  been  leading  factors  in  improving  the  social  condition 
of  man,  and  of  advancing  religion. 

And  who  shall  say  that  the  mariner's  compass  has  not 
been  one  of  the  greatest  of  influences  in  changing  the  force 
of  the  social  world  —  leading  to  new  water-paths  and  open- 
ing new  realms  ? 

Steam  navigation  and  the  railway,  the  telegraph  and  the 
telephone,  have  brought  the  world  into  neighborhood,  pro- 
moted mutual  acquaintance,  effected  civic  alliances,  and 
through  the  goods  of  one  land  promoted  the  good  of  all. 

Who  can  determine  social  changes  wrought  by  such  dis- 
coveries and  inventions  as  relate  to  convenience  in  fire- 
kindling,  and  in  artificial  lighting? 

And  for  another  illustration  of  economic  influence,  take 
the  value  of  land  in  Great  Britain,  which  has  recently  so 
declined  as  to  diminish  the  wealth  of  ancient  noble  houses, 
during  the  very  period  in  which  the  wealth  of  the  manufac- 
turing class  has  greatly  increased, —  so  shifting  the  weight 
of  pecuniary  holdings,  and  greatly  modifying  social  con- 
ditions and  customs. 

Such  influences,  whether  physical,  ethnic,  political,  indus- 
trial and  economic,  have,  throughout  the  globe  and  in  all 
ages  of  time,  powerfully  transformed,  to  a  greater  or  less 
extent,  the  religious  condition  of  men,  moulding  religious 
institutes  and  affecting  religious  thought.  To  name  but  one 
illustration :  the  great  modern  discoveries  in  natural  science 


ETHICS.  19 

have  given  to  Christendom  a  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth, 
a  new  idea  of  God,  and  new  conception  of  the  place  man 
occupies  in  the  reahn  of  nature.  To  name  another:  con- 
sider the  religious  changes  wrought  in  Buddhism  itself  by 
the  local  genius  of  the  country  receiving  it,  as  Ceylon,  Siam, 
Japan,  China,  Thibet.  To  name  another:  take  note  of  the 
influence  the  Ottoman  Turk  has  had  upon  Islam.  Note, 
too,  in  Hinduism,  the  modifications  incident  to  British  rule 
in  India. 

Making,  however,  every  allowance  for  influences  secular, 
the  truth  remains  that  progressive  improvement  in  man's 
social  condition  chiefly  depends  upon  the  moral  improve- 
ment that  goes  forward  within  each  individual  man. 

What  is  the  highest  test  of  a  civilized,  a  cultured,  social 
condition  ?     Progress. 

If  an  advance  in  social  condition  is  pictured  as  the  jour- 
ney of  any  great  people,  it  must  be  determined  by  passing 
definite  milestones.  If  it  be  like  a  beneficent  stream,  it 
must  be  in  continuous  onflow. 

Yet  if  we  look  for  the  springs  of  social  progress,  they 
cannot  always  be  found  in  a  vital  accumulation  of  ethnic 
force  that  comes  dov/n  as  a  heritage  from  the  past.  It  is 
often  an  improved  idea  taken  from  some  other  people,  and 
grafted  upon  the  virile  ancient  stock.  Borne  about  the 
world  in  a  commerce  of  ideas,  there  is  more  of  justice,  more 
of  material  prosperity.  Yet  no  true  social  progress  is  mere 
sheeplike  imitation.  If  mankind  is,  in  Pascal's  phrase,  "as 
one  man  who  lives  always,  and  wdio  learns  continually," 
then  a  unique  racial  vitality  is  radical  to  a  normal  and 
idiocratic  growth. 

Races  relatively  at  a  standstill,  waning  civilizations,  are 
renewed  only  through  an  inward  power  within  the  old  stock 
to  vivify  the  scion,  by  adapting  the  old  culture  to  the  new 
in  the  world  of  ideas.  It  is  in  this  way  that  Japan  has 
come  to  the  world 's  front. 

And  this  has  been  so,  at  every  upward  step  in  social 
evolution  —  the  introduction  of  fire,  the  use  of  metals,  the 


20  TIME   TEST   IN   SOCIAL  EVOLUTION. 

domestication  of  animals,  the  upward  trend  from  barbarism, 
greater  skill  in  hunting,  improving  pastoral  conditions,  the 
development  of  agriculture  and  of  the  mechanism  that 
secures  larger  aid  from  the  powers  of  nature, —  everywhere 
and  always  great  peoples  have  profited  by  individual 
achievement  through  the  adoption  of  new  ideas. 

"When,  therefore,  we  come  to  inquire  into  certain  phases 
of  social  condition,  as  of  human  freedom,  the  home,  educa- 
tion, literature,  moral  thought,  philanthropy,  and  world- 
wide extension  of  altruistic  ideals  of  life,  we  see  that  what- 
ever tends  directly  to  improve  the  individual  is  of  para- 
mount importance;  and  in  this  the  moral  considerations 
come  to  the  fore. 

In  what  does  individual  culture  consist?  What  is  the 
highest  mental  training,  but  the  exercise  of  right  views  of 
scientific  truth,  of  moral  truth  in  its  relations  to  man,  and 
of  religious  truth  ?  Man 's  intellectual  nature  is  a  unit,  and 
in  the  development  and  training  of  his  faculties  not  only 
are  the  sources  of  culture  found  to  be  closely  connected, 
but  religious  culture  is  found  to  have  the  control  among 
them.  Hence  the  manifest  importance  of  religion,  and  the 
need  of  investigating  the  religious  condition  of  a  people 
w^hen  making  historical  inquiries.^ 

Difference  in  moral  ideas  makes  a  difference  in  civiliza- 
tion. The  degree  of  civil  and  religious  freedom,  the  rights 
of  the  common  people ;  the  condition  of  the  home,  the  devel- 
opment of  child  life  and  of  womanhood;  the  state  of  intel- 
lectual and  moral  education;  the  unfolding  of  the  literary 
talent  of  mankind;  the  solving  of  social  problems;  the 
cooperation  of  vast  bodies  of  men  in  highly  organized 
religious  service ; —  all  these  depend  upon  what  kind  of 
moral  ideas  are  entertained. 

If  then,  we  think  of  the  social  world  as  a  unit,  and  seek 

Tor  the  underlying  idea  and  a  portion  of  the  phraseology 
of  this  paragraph  the  writer  is  under  obligations  to  President 
Theodore  D.  Woolsey.  Vide  the  Neio  EngJander.  Vol.  XIX, 
p.  413. 


ETHICS.  21 

to  reduce  the  phenomena  of  society  to  general  laws,  we  can 
but  examine  the  philosophical  and  religious  phenomena  of 
our  race  in  search  for  great  underlying  principles  —  prin- 
ciples that  have  controlled  the  evolution  of  local  society, 
upon  this  continent  or  that,  for  fifty  or  a  hundred  genera- 
tions of  men,  and  whose  roots  run  back  into  the  prehistoric 
usages  and  the  germinal  ethic  development  of  varied  tribes 
primeval, —  principles  operating  in  a  manner  analogous  to 
that  observed  in  cosmic  processes  —  the  moral  evolution  pro- 
ceeding in  an  unhasting,  unresting  life,  slowly  rising  age 
after  age.  Do  we  speak  of  races  and  religions  ?  Is  not  the 
perfect  development  of  any  human  life  as  dependent  upon 
one's  personal  relationship  to  society  as  the  perfection  of 
fruit  is  dependent  on  its  relation  to  the  parent  tree  ?  We, 
therefore,  speak  properly  in  putting  together  comparative 
religion  and  comparative  sociology,  since  there  must  be 
some  comprehensive  social  science  or  practical  scheme  for 
classifying  the  principles  that  underlie  the  entire  range  of 
social  phenomena,  and  for  discerning  the  relations  that 
exist  between  man's  thought  and  man's  act  in  all  moral 
matters  that  society  has  to  do  with.  Is  there  not  a  vast 
generative  force  when  a  new  moral  idea  comes  into  the 
world?  Is  it  not  possible  to  attempt  to  trace  the  funda- 
mental ideas  of  the  five  great  religions,  not  in  pursuit  of 
dogmatic  questions,  but  solely  as  an  inquiry  for  sociological 
results?  What  are  the  great  religions  in  their  internal 
spirit  ?  What  in  them  has  best  developed  man 's  moral  and 
intellectual  powers  in  the  most  important  hum.an  relations? 
What  of  liberty  ?  What  of  home  building  ?  What  of  edu- 
cation? What  of  moral  ideas?  What  of  the  hospital? 
What  of  industrial  conditions?  What  of  self-propagating 
power?  What,  in  all  these  religions,  is  best  adapted  to 
world-wide  extension.  What  religion  —  modified  as  it  must 
be  through  the  final  acceptance  of  the  great  moral  leaders 
spiritually  enlightened  among  all  nations  —  will  be  socially 
the  best  for  the  future  of  mankind?  Is  it  not  worth  while 
for  anyone  who  is  disposed  to  make  the  most  of  himself, — 


22  TIME    TEST    IN    SOCIAL    EVOLUTION. 

to  play  well  his  part  in  the  state,  the  home,  the  school,  in  an 
intelligent  relation  to  the  world  of  ideas,  in  society,  and  in 
the  true  Church  of  God  —  by  whatever  name  it  is  called, — 
to  take  time  enough  to  examine  those  great  thoughts  which 
have  been  the  leading  powers  upon  this  planet,  and  then  to 
appropriate  to  himself,  for  his  own  guidance,  those  ideas 
which  will  make  him  most  thoroughly  manly,  and  which 
will,  through  him,  help  to  elevate  the  human  race?  If 
there  is  a  strong  presumption  that  much  in  what  we  call 
modern  civilization  has  an  ethical  basis,  shall  we  not  study 
the  moral  forces  behind  the  development?  Are  not  the 
most  important  changes,  that  are  involved  in  passing  from 
savagery  to  society  at  its  best,  not  only  the  fruit  of  intel- 
lectual development  but  of  that  practical  reason  which 
guides  moral  conduct?  Is  there  not  a  strong  balance  of 
probability  that  the  moral  ideas  introduced  into  the  world 
by  Jesus  Christ  have  been  more  helpful  to  man  than  any 
other  influence  known  in  history?^  "The  creation  of  a 
new  habit  of  thought,"  said  Professor  Huxley,  when  he 
gathered  up  the  results  of  half  a  century  of  scientific 
studies,  "is  a  greater  achievement  than  any  material 
invention. ' ' 

What  this  book  is  for  is  to  discover  the  kind  of  ideas  that 
are  needed  to  be  introduced  into  village  and  city,  lonely 
farm-house,  solitary  ship,  the  peopled  cellar  and  attic,  the 
palace,  the  slums  of  Christendom,  barbaric  islands  or  con- 
tinents, semi-civilized  realms  throughout  the  globe  —  to 
induce  new  habits  of  thought  for  the  renewal  of  mankind  — • 
to  select  from  the  choicest  religious  and  philosophical  ideas 
that  have  influenced  the  human  race  those  best  fitted  for 
social  service. 

^"Never  can  any  religious  progress  hope  to  rival  the  gigan- 
tic step  which  humanity  made  through  the  revolution  effected 
by  Christ."— Strauss'  Life  of  Christ,  Vol.  II,  p.  49.  Third  Eng- 
lish edition. 


DIFFICULTIES   OF    THIS   INQUIRY.  23 

VII. 

Yet  the  conduct  of  any  inquiry  along  lines  that  reach 
back  toward  the  dawn  of  historic  time,  and  that  in  the 
present  day  circle  the  globe,  can  be  nothing  else  than  tenta- 
tive, subject  to  vast  errors  through  ignorance,  and  greater 
errors  through  unsuspected  prejudice.  What  writer  upon 
sociology  can  claim  a  finality  for  his  results  1  The  material 
is  so  fragmentary  that  his  interpretation  of  the  facts  must 
be  subject  to  review  under  a  more  perfect  light.  For 
world-wide  relations  in  different  ages  it  cannot  be  looked 
for  that  one  should  have  the  mastery  of  it  all,  or  be  equally 
well  informed  upon  every  part  of  it.  Living  as  we  do  at  a 
period  when  new  and  transcendent  epochs  of  history  are 
discovered,  perhaps,  in  the  morning  paper,  what  can  an 
author  do?  While  lie  is  verifying  one  fact,  two  more 
appear,  to  be  verified.  So  vast  is  the  territorial  range 
involved,  w4tli  national  areas  of  hundreds  of  millions  of 
diverse  peoples,  and  so  vast  are  the  historical  relations,  that 
any  inquiry  —  however  great  its  practical  interest — must  be 
not  only  imperfect  and  unsatisfactory,  but  it  may,  through 
an  unconscious  bias  on  the  part  of  the  inquirer,  be  mis- 
leading. Who  does  not  remember  Fronde's  apothegm,  that 
the  facts  of  history  are  like  the  alphabetical  blocks  of  child- 
hood, they  can  be  made  to  spell  anything  by  so  arranging 
them  as  to  spell  what  one  wishes.  Buckle's  facts  set  out  to 
mis-spell  England.  The  intellectual  and  moral  develop- 
ment of  Europe  and  the  history  of  civilization  upon  the 
continent  have  suffered  from  mis-spelling.  How  then  can 
it  be  hoped  for  that  truth  will  be  perfectly  served  by  an 
effort  to  depict,  justly  and  accurately,  the  phases  of  the 
world's  religious  thought  and  life  during  so  many  ages, 
with  illimitable  illustrations  upon  which  to  draw  in  the 
attempt  to  exhibit  the  underlying  principles  and  the  con- 
current social  phenomena. 

Yet  Carlyle  's  affirmation  holds  good :  if  no  one  can  make 
a  thing  mathematically  square,   any  good  carpenter  can 


24  TIME    TEST    IN    SOCIAL    EVOLUTION. 

make  it  square  enough.  The  trend  of  events  all  over  the 
globe,  and  the  trend  of  events  age  after  age  in  history,  can 
never  be  concealed.  He  who  runs  may  read.  Men  of 
affairs  are  apt  to  judge  offhand  in  a  large  way  without 
debating  particulars :  as  Wendell  Phillips  once  said, — ' '  The 
answer  to  Confucianism  is  China,  to  Brahmanism  the  map 
of  India  is  the  answer."  It  is  vain  to  ask  whether  the 
uplifting  truths  of  Buddhism  are  best,  and  it  is  aside  from 
the  point  to  inquire  whether  Mohammedanism  will  prevail ; 
the  inquiry  is,  rather,  as  to  the  present  day  effect  of  all 
the  past  centuries  of  experiment:  that  will  decide. 

In  the  study  of  age-long  experiments  in  moral  evolution, 
it  may  not  be  easy  at  first  to  establish  a  working  hypothesis 
supported  by  an  adequate  basis, —  it  is  so  in  the  study  of 
questions  of  natural  science.  The  social  facts  are  to  be 
classified.  ' '  No  argument  can  overwhelm  a  fact. '  '^  Results 
are  to  be  studied  rather  than  causes;  actual  accomplish- 
ments rather  than  theological  systems  and  philosophical 
speculations.  And  in  the  final  outcome  the  most  that  can 
be  done  is  to  discover  the  balance  of  probability;  but  if 
that  can  be  done,  it  is  enough.  Probability  is  the  guide 
of  life. 

*'Art  thou  he  that  cometh,  or  look  we  for  another?" 

"Tell  John  what  things  ye  have  seen  and  heard." 

"By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them." 

If  in  the  study  of  races  and  religions  we  find  that  the 
nations  most  actuated  by  Christian  ideals  are  now  so  far 
in  the  ascendency  as  to  have  a  governmental  control  of 
forty-five  in  every  hundred  of  the  human  race,  having 
efficient  armies  and  navies,  having  advanced  industrial 
methods  and  products;  and  if  under  their  rule  there  is  the 
greatest  liberty,  and  if  in  colonizing  and  home  building, 
and  in  education,  art  and  literature,  they  are  most  pro- 
gressive peoples;  and  if  in  philanthropic  endeavor  and  in 
self-extending  moral  ideas  they  bear  the  commanding  part 
in  the  world,— then  it  may  be  suitably  inquired  whether 

'Dr.  Richard  Salter  Storrs. 


DIFFICULTIES   OF    THIS   INQUIRY.  25 

there  is  presumptive  evidence  that  the  moral  ideas  which 
dominate  Christendom  are  better  adapted  to  advance  or  to 
retard  social  progress.  Or,  to  put  it  in  a  more  practical 
way,  we  may  inquire  —  at  this  hour  of  the  waking  up  of 
great  peoples  from  a  relatively  lethargic  condition  during 
many  ages, —  whether  their  seizing  on  the  fruits  of  the  most 
advanced  and  aggressive  civilizations  of  the  globe  may  not 
be  accompanied  by  their  seizing  also  on  the  religious  and 
moral  ideas  which  theoretically  and  to  some  extent  prac- 
tically characterize  the  most  progressive  nations. 

Yet,  if  the  cock-crowing  was  never  the  cause  of  the  dawn, 
it  were  a  shame  without  fulness  of  knowledge  to  forecast 
the  future  of  races  and  religions ;  nor  may  any  man  wisely 
do  so,  who  is  now  living  upon  a  globe  where  the  Confucians, 
the  Buddhists,  the  Brahmans  and  the  Mohammedans  to-day 
number  some  eight  hundreds  of  millions  of  people,  who 
habitually  look  upon  Christians  as  dwelling  in  a  snail  shell 
which  they  foolishly  fancy  to  be  the  most  splendid  palace 
in  the  universe. 

And  it  would  be  a  still  greater  shame  to  enter  on  com- 
parative studies  in  the  evolution  of  man's  moral  ideas, 
^\'ithout  such  enlargement  of  human  sympathy  as  to  annul 
the  danger  of  distorted  views,  and  to  eventuate  in  the  for- 
mation of  practicable  schemes  for  mutual  helpfulness 
among  men. 


CHAPTER  TWO:  CONTRAST  IN  THE  CIVIC 
CONDITIONS. 


In  observing  the  self-organized  and  self-governing  vil- 
lage communities  of  India  twenty-three  hundred  years  ago, 
a  Greek  writer  spoke  of  the  women  as  virtuous,  the  men 
valorous,  honest,  truthful,  sober,  industrious,  skilful,  with 
little  litigation,  no  slavery,  and  living  in  political  peace. 
The  Hindu  records,  too,  have  given  delightful  pictures  of 
the  early  ages. 

The  custodians  of  the  laws  of  ancient  India  were  the 
Brahmans;  they,  too,  were  the  counsellors  of  the  native 
princes  and  the  teachers  of  the  people.  Little  by  little, 
during  immemorial  ages,  through  the  rise  of  the  caste 
system  and  its  development, —  which  can  at  no  point  be 
separated  from  BrahmanicaP  influence, —  the  great  mass  of 
the  people  of  the  peninsula,  comprising  the  lowest  caste, 
were  reduced  to  what  was  in  effect  serfdom.  Their  right 
to  a  superior  condition  was  so  long  denied  that  they  finally 
ceased  to  struggle  against  their  servile  fate. 

Equality  of  social  opportunity  has  been  for  more  than 
three  thousand  years  impossible  to  nine-tenths  of  the  people 

Tor  the  purposes  of  this  book  the  author  has  not  maintained 
that  distinction  between  ancient  Brahmanism  and  modern  Hin- 
duism which  is  justified  by  Indian  theology  and  philosophy,  but 
has  used  the  former  term  to  indicate  that  responsible  unit  of 
power  in  Hindu  history  which  has  created  and  administered 
modern  Hinduism  as  it  did  the  more  ancient  system.  The  sub- 
stantial unity  of  the  Vedic  system  and  Hinduism  is  assumed. 
"If  anything  in  history  be  certain,  it  is  that  Hinduism,  with  all 
it  stands  for,  has  descended  without  any  break  of  continuity, 
though  with  cumulative  accretions  and  ever  increasing  variations, 
from  the  faith  held  and  the  order  observed  by  the  Vedic  men." — 
Principal  Pairbairn's  Philosophy  of  the  Christian  Religion,  p.  260. 
London,  1902. 


INDIA.  27 

of  India  through  Brahmanism,  which  in  respect  to  service 
due  from  the  lowest  caste  has  operated  as  a  civic  aristocracy 
as  well  as  the  sole  religious  authority. 

India's  population  is  so  dense,  and  intercommunication 
has  been  so  difficult,  that  it  is  unsafe  to  generalize  in  regard 
to  customs.  What  is  true  of  one  part  of  India  may  not 
be  true  of  another  part.  Among  the  subdivisions  of  th& 
people  some  are  more  highly  civilized  than  others. 

Mr.  T.  W.  Arnold^  states  that  in  Travancore,  upon  the 
west  coast,  certain  of  the  lower  castes  may  not  come  nearer 
than  seventy-four  paces  to  a  Brahman,  and  they  are 
required,  as  they  pass  along  the  road,  to  give  warning  of 
their  approach.  In  some  of  the  great  cities  of  India  the 
gates  were  formerly  closed  at  five  in  the  afternoon  and  not 
opened  till  nine  in  the  morning:  the  low-caste  men  were 
expelled  before  the  slanting  rays  of  the  sun  might  throw 
their  shadows  upon  some  Brahman  to  defile  him ;  nor  could 
they  return  until  the  rays  of  the  sun  were  sufficiently  per- 
pendicular to  protect  the  Brahmans  from  possible  shadows. 

If,  happily,  such  statements  are  exaggerated,  or  ill 
founded,  it  may  be  due  to  the  coming  into  India  of  a  new 
spirit  in  a  new  age.  There  has  been  apparently  a  great 
change  in  public  opinion,  in  some  portions  of  India,  as  to 
the  rights  of  man,  of  every  man  of  every  caste.  Although 
the  Brahmanical  usages  and  native  customs  of  a  hundred 
generations  have  been  respected,  for  the  most  part,  by  the 
British  administration,  yet  new  laws  have  to  some  extent 
been  introduced  that  represent  in  their  humanizing  influ- 
ences the  highest  results  of  a  Christian  civilization,  so  far 
as  practicable  in  India,  where  Hinduism  has  the  right  of 
way  so  long  as  it  does  not  violate  civil  rights  or  prove 
intolerant  of  other  faiths.  An  act  of  Parliament  for  the 
better  government  of  India,  and  a  penal  code  drafted  under 
Lord  Macaulay  in  1836  and  passed  into  law  in  1860,  have 
in  many  respects  made  a  new  world  of  that  country. 

The  most  casual  inquirer  into  the  conditions  of  British 

^The  Preaching  of  Islam,  p.  220.     Westminster,  1896. 


28  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

rule  in  Hindustan  can  but  admire  the  spirit  shown  by  vast 
numbers  of  the  crowTi  servants,  who,  as  representatives  of 
the  government,  recognize  the  claims  upon  them  of  incred- 
ible multitudes  of  men.  And  the  testimony  of  Macaulay 
is  of  great  value  as  to  the  moral  impression  made  by  Chris- 
tian statesmen  in  recent  generations: 

"English  valor  and  English  intelligence  have  done  less 
to  extend  and  to  preserve  our  Oriental  empire  than  English 
veracity ;  no  oath  which  superstition  can  devise,  no  hostage 
however  precious,  inspires  a  hundredth  part  of  the  con- 
fidence w^hich  is  produced  by  the  'Yea,  yea,'  and  'Nay, 
nay,'  of  a  British  envoy." 

British  power  in  India,  says  Lord  Curzon,  is  sustained 
by  the  Christian  ideal ;  seeking  to  retain  by  inflexible  jus- 
tice and  stainless  honor  what  w^as  at  first  won  by  the  sword 
of  adventurers.  An  imperial  mission  indeed  it  is,  to  min- 
ister to  the  civic  wants  of  three  hundred  millions  of  people, 
with  their  mysterious  civilization  and  their  craving  for 
spiritual  good. 


II. 

In  diverging  from  Brahmanical  habits  of  thought  and 
life,  the  Buddhists  renounced  caste  and  proclaimed  a  com- 
mon brotherhood  among  those  wholly  devoted  to  the  pur- 
suit of  virtue;  and  since  all  Buddhist  boys  are  early 
schooled  for  some  length  of  time  in  a  monastery,  and  since 
by  theory  the  very  princes  expect  sometime,  in  after  ages 
of  transmigration,  if  not  now,  to  become  monks,  there  has 
iDcen  a  greater  social  equality  in  Buddhist  lands  for  ages 
than  in  other  portions  of  Asia.  Any  person  of  any  family 
in  the  East,  upon  entering  a  Buddhist  monastery,  is  the 
equal  of  every  one  he  finds  there. 

Yet  it  has  been  the  leading  dogma  of  Buddhism  to  extin- 
guish all  desire  —  even  the  desire  for  a  better  civic  con- 
dition ;  so  that  the  natural  leaders  of  the  people  have  exer- 
cised no   direct  and  positive  influence  upon  government 


BUDDHIST    LANDS.  29 

save  in  the  interests  of  peace;  this,  however,  has  proved 
age  after  age  a  great  boon,  since  no  military  civilization 
has  ever  been  built  up  in  a  Buddhist  country.  The  prin- 
cipal philosophical  theories  of  the  system  have  never 
favored  a  progressive  civilization;  and  the  governments^ 
whether  in  one  Buddhist  country  or  another,  have  fallen 
into  the  hands  of  this  despotic  djniasty  or  that,  of  an  Orien- 
tal type  somewhat  ameliorated  by  Buddhistic  influences. 

Burmah  has  been  almost  purely  Buddhist  for  nearly 
fifteen  hundred  years.  Prior  to  its  passing  under  the  con- 
trol of  Great  Britain  the  officials  received  no  regular  salary, 
and  not  uncommonly  they  were  so  rapacious  and  grasping 
that  a  local  representative  of  the  crown  was  popularly 
known  as  the  ''eater  of  a  township."  Lax  was  the  judicial 
system,  justice  was  sold,  the  criminal  code  was  barbaric, 
and  the  general  administration  of  the  despotic  government 
was  corrupt.  All  fruits  of  labor  and  the  laborers  were 
owned  by  the  king,  and  of  slavery  there  were  seven  grada- 
tions.^ The  practical  friendliness  and  helpfulness  to  all 
men  as  brethren,  which  so  glorified  Gautama  in  a  gloomy 
age  of  overbearing  wickedness  and  hard-hearted  oppression, 
but  slightly  influenced  the  daily  life  of  the  Buddhist  court. 
Yet  a  protest  was  entered  every  year,  when  the  Buddliist 
archbishop-  in  the  royal  presence  was  seated  in  a  place 
superior  to  that  of  the  king,  to  remind  him  of  the  observ- 
ance of  the  laws  by  which  royalty  should  be  governed, — ■ 
to  restrain  anger,  to  be  patient  and  gentle,  to  feed  the  poor, 
to  bestow  alms  freely,  to  practise  self-denial,  to  observe 
the  rules  of  uprightness  and  integrity,  and  in  no  wise  to 
oppress  his  subjects.  The  sacrifice  of  a  king,  said  the 
Master,  should  be  to  repair  all  injustice. 

The  most  purely  Buddhist  country  in  the  world  is  Siam ; 
and  whatever  it  was  fifty  years  ago  was  the  best  that  Bud- 

^Burma  under  British  Rule  and  Before,  John  Nisbet,  London, 
1901,  contains  much  valuable  information.  For  some  of  the 
statements  in  the  text  consult  pages  192,  193,  153,  155,  177. 

=A  title  given  to  the  ruler  of  the  monastery  in  which  the  king 
was  taught  when  a  hoy. 


BO  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

dhism  could  do  in  more  than  twelve  centuries  toward  pro- 
moting popular  freedom.  Within  half  a  century,  the  great 
political  ideas  that  actuate  Christian  nations  have  greatly 
modified  the  absolute  monarchy  reigning  there;  slavery 
having  been  abolished,  and  religious  toleration  granted. 
An  American  professor  of  international  law  has  been 
recently  appointed  legal  adviser  to  the  king.  The  relation 
of  the  country  to  other  nationalities  is  being  improved 
through  new  treaties.  The  crown  prince  has  been  edu- 
cated in  England.  During  many  years  the  king  has  stead- 
fastly sought  to  raise  the  people  and  the  government  to  a 
permanently  higher  level.  The  printing  press,  the  post 
office,  the  telegraph  and  the  railway  have  been  introduced 
through  the  king's  initiative.  The  government  has  made 
gambling  illegal,  giving  up  its  very  remunerative  tax  upon 
it.  So  efficient  is  an  enlightened  despotism;  the  most 
momentous  sociological  changes  being  wrought  in  a  moment 
through  the  changed  will  of  a  great-hearted  king.  And 
in  this  case  the  reigning  sovereign  has  graciously  acknowl- 
edged again  and  again  the  practical  value  of  the  humane 
ideas  introduced  into  Siam  by  American  philanthropists.^ 

To  speak  of  Japan  as  predominantly  Buddhist  is  true, 
but  Buddhism  has  not  been  the  predominant  influence  in 
civic  affairs  or  in  forming  national  character.^ 

So  religious  are  the  people  that  the  proportion  of  Bud- 
dhist monks  and  Shinto  priests  to  the  whole  population  is 
greater  than  that  of  the  clerical  order  in  the  United  States, 
and  three-fourths  of  them  are  Buddhists.  The  ancient 
Shintoism  and  more  recent  Buddhism  are  thoroughly  inter- 
fused, and  they  so  far  meet  the  popular  demand  for  places 
of  worship  that  there  is  either  a  Buddhist  temple  or  Shinto 

^"The  American  missionaries,"  says  the  present  king,  "have 
done  more  to  advance  the  welfare  of  my  country  than  any  other 
foreign  influence." 

^As  to  its  present  status.  Buddhism,  which  had  been  the  state 
religion  for  centuries,  was  disestablished  and  disendowed  by  the 
revolution  of  1S68,  and  the  Shinto  religion  was  put  into  its  place. 
Since  then,  says  Professor  Chamberlain  in  Things  Japanese,  Bud- 
dhism has  been  losing  ground. 


THE    EMPIRE    OF    JAPAN.  31 

shrine  for  every  three  hundred  and  twenty-five  of  the 
population. 

It  is  no  disrespect  to  the  genuineness  of  the  Buddhist 
and  Shinto  religious  experiences  to  affirm  that  they  never 
taught  the  value  of  man  during  many  centuries  in  the 
Orient,  when  the  rights  of  man  were  little  known  in  the 
Christian  despotisms  of  the  Occident.  That  there  was  no 
Buddhist  nation  in  the  world  that  knew  what  liberty  was, 
seems  to  be  the  opinion  of  advanced  Japanese  thinkers. 

As  a  youth,  Joseph  Neesima,  the  founder  of  the  Doshisha 
College  at  Kyoto,  ran  away  from  home  and  reached  Amer- 
ica; in  part,  as  he  stated,  that  he  might  get  away  from  an 
arbitrary  government  to  a  land  where  all  men  were  free 
and  equal.  The  great  statesman,  J\Iarquis  Ito,  was  another 
of  the  young  men  who  in  early  life  fled  to  the  British  Isles, 
that  he  might  gain  the  ideas  needful  to  promote  a  happier 
political  evolution  in  his  own  land.  With  a  degree  of  wis- 
dom which  indicates  a  great  body  of  character  and  intrinsic 
national  power  behind  it,  Japan  has  come  into  touch  with 
the  age;  the  liberal  political  constitution  promulgated  by 
the  emperor  in  1889  being  modelled  in  important  particu- 
lars upon  those  of  Christian  nations.  The  readiness  with 
which  Japan  has, —  from  a  political  point  of  view, —  mod- 
ernized itself,  indicates  a  racial  vitality  that  promises  a 
great  future  for  the  nation  as  one  of  the  foremost  of  the 
world-powers  —  the  peer  of  any.^     Its  motive  in  acting  so 

^To  give  rhetorical  expression  to  the  idea  of  an  Oriental  scholar, 
it  may  be  said  that  the  exquisite  arts  of  Japan  only  led  men  of 
the  West  to  speak  of  the  artisans  as  "a  semi-barbaric  people;" 
but  when  the  islanders  arose  and  killed  certain  Christians  who 
were  for  the  time  being  somewhat  out  of  favor  with  their  national 
neighbors,  Christendom  exclaimed,  "Now  we  know  that  the  Jap- 
anese are  as  civilized  as  anybody."  Lady  Yochiko  Anegakoji  has 
stated  the  new  issue  of  their  people  in  a  recent  poem:  — 

"Land  of  the  Rising  Sun,  in  every  clime 
Thy  praises  have  been  sung,  distant  and  clear; 
"With  roaring  cannon,  and  exploding  shells, 
To  thunder  forth  a  loud  accompaniment." 


32  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

promptly  was  that  of  securing  Japan  to  the  Japanese;  it 
having  been  feared  that  the  nation  might  fall  before  that 
sham  type  of  Christianity  which  had  seized  India  and  ter- 
rorized China  through  the  opium  war.  That  the  Japanese 
statesmen  acted  not  a  moment  too  soon,  the  recent  fate  of 
Burmah  bears  witness.  Looked  at  from  an  evolutionary 
point  of  view,  it  is  the  survival  of  the  strongest ;  and  polit- 
ically Brahmanism  and  Buddhism  have  been  weak.  How- 
ever unjust  have  been  many  of  the  wars  originated  and 
carried  on  through  the  power  of  un-Christian  ideas  in 
so-called  Christian  nations,  it  is  clear  that  human  freedom 
and  essential  justice  have  been  promoted  by  a  change  of 
government  in  the  conquered  realms.  That  Japan  has  sea- 
sonably shaken  off  the  mediaeval  spirit,  renounced  the  policy 
of  excluding  new  ideas  that  so  long  prevailed,  and  has 
availed  itself  of  the  political,  military,  industrial  and  edu- 
cational appliances  of  the  most  advanced  peoples  —  includ- 
ing religious  toleration  —  is  a  striking  testimony  to  the 
indirect  influence  of  the  great  nations  of  Christendom. 

It  is,  however,  the  native  genius  of  Japan  that  has  ren- 
dered a  most  important  service  to  the  cause  of  human 
progress  by  calling  a  halt  to  an  Occidental  conceit  for 
exploiting  and  dominating  the  northern  Orient,  through 
an  outgrasping  policy  for  adding  vast  unpeopled  spaces 
to  an  empire  which  has  not  yet  gone  so  far  as  to  develop 
her  own  enormous  resources  at  home,  and  which  —  in  a 
reckless  attempt  to  secure  ice-free  ports  for  a  non-existent 
commerce  —  forced  on  Japan  a  war  of  self-defence,  that 
may  ultimately  secure  "Asia  for  the  Asiatics,"-- a  cry  as 
just  as  that  of  "America  for  the  Americans,"  or  "Europe 
for  the  Europeans." 

No  view,  however,  could  be  more  mistaken  than  to  think 
of  the  Japan  of  earlier  ages  as  semi-barbaric ;  albeit,  its 
civilization  was  like  a  pocket-piece,  kept  for  its  own  delec- 
tation. The  predominant  power  in  Japan  for  ages  has  been 
that  of  the  samurai,  the  loyalists,  body  and  soul  devoted 


THE    EMPIRE    OF    JAPAN.  83 

to  the  state.  To  Japan  loyalty^  has  been  the  keynote  of 
the  national  character,  as  filial  piety  has  been  to  that  of 
China.  It  is  this  spirit  that  has  so  interpenetrated  the 
masses  of  the  people  that  the  rank  and  file  of  the  soldiery 
are  enrolled  as  the  self-devoted,  who  are  determined  to  die 
if  need  be  for  their  country.- 

If  this  ancient  sentiment  was  not  at  bottom  religious,  it 
was  apparently  so;  the  divine  right  of  kings,  as  known  to 
Christendom,  existing  in  an  exaggerated  form  among  the 
samurai,  who  held  that  the  mikado  was  of  divine  descent 
and  clothed  with  sacred  powers. 

So  it  came  about  that  feudal  loyalty  as  a  positive  ele- 
ment was  the  nation-shaping  power,  rather  than  the  Bud- 
dhist repression  of  desire. 

The  samurai,  or  ancient  military  class,  comprised  about 
one-twentieth  of  the  population;  other  classes  being  the 
farmers,  the  artisans  and  the  merchants.  The  men,  to 
whom  loyalty  to  the  nation  in  the  person  of  their  sovereign 
was  the  first  thought,  led  lives  of  simplicity.  They 
thought  little  of  money.  Patriotism  and  right  living, 
fidelity  and  strength  of  manhood  were  the  main  things. 

It  is  not  to  the  present  purpose  to  inquire  whether  the 
ancient  ideal  was  fulfilled  in  life;  it  is  to  the  point  that 
there  was  an  ideal.  The  military  achievements  of  Japan 
have  called  world-wide  attention  to  many  delicate  traits  of 
national  character  aside  from  the  heroic ;  traits  formed  by 
centuries    of    careful    training.     To  illustrate,  take  these 

^By  Mr.  Jim  Suzuki,  a  prominent  publicist,  it  is  stated  as  one 
of  thie  objections  to  Christianity  that  it  emphasizes  the  impor- 
tance of  the  individual,  placing  it  before  that  of  the  state.  To 
cite  another  of  the  recent  court  poems  of  Japan: 

"A  sweet  perfume  is  on  our  master's  sleeve. 
The  perfume  of  the  sweetest  flower  on  earth  — 
Loyalty, —  growing  in  the  nation's  heart." 

—  Lady  Isao  Seigenji. 
''Professor   George  William   Knox,   in   his   Loioell  Lectures   in. 
Boston,  1905,  alluded  to  this  contempt  of  life  as  an  influential- 
Buddhist  dogma. 


34  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

passages  written  some  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago, 
and  others  three  hundred: 

"No  one  is  to  act  simply  for  the  gratification  of  his  o\m 
desires,  but  he  is  to  strive  to  do  what  may  be  opposed  to  his 
desires, —  to  exercise  self-control  that  everyone  may  be 
ready  for  whatever  he  may  be  called  upon  by  his  superiors 
to  do."i 

"Evil  is  traditional,  long-continued,  and  beyond  remedy. 
Books  full  of  lust,  which  should  never  be  shown  to  a  woman 
or  a  young  man,  lead  to  vice.  They  are  of  a  class,  vile, 
mean,  comparable  to  the  books  of  the  sages  as  charcoal  to 
ice,  as  the  stench  of  decay  to  the  perfume  of  flowers. 
Samurai  must  have  a  care  of  their  words,  and  are  not  to 
speak  of  avarice,  cowardice,  or  lust.  Their  joy  is  in  talk 
of  battles  and  plans  for  war.  And  they  study  how  parents 
and  lords  should  be  obeyed,  and  the  duty  of  samurai.  To 
the  samurai  first  of  all  is  righteousness ;  next  life,  then  sil- 
ver and  gold.  These  last  are  of  value,  but  some  put  them 
in  place  of  righteousness.  But  to  the  samurai  even  life  is 
as  dirt  compared  to  righteousness.  "- 

"Every  one  should  assist  with  kindness  and  liberality 
the  aged,  whether  widowers  or  widows,  and  orphans,  and 
persons  without  relatives;  for  justice  to  these  four  is  the 
root  of  good  government.  The  principles  of  government 
are  humanity,  integrity,  courtesy,  wisdom,  and  truth. 
Eespect  the  gods,  keep  the  heart  pure,  and  be  diligent  in 
business  during  the  whole  life.  When  I  was  young  I 
determined  to  fight  and  punish  all  my  own  and  my  ances- 
tors '  enemies,  and  I  did  punish  them ;  but  afterwards,  by 
deep  consideration,  I  found  that  the  way  of  -Heaven  was 
to  help  the  people  and  not  to  punish  them.  Let  my  suc- 
cessors follow  out  this  policy,  or  they  are  not  of  my  line. 
In  this  lies  the  strength  of  the  nation.     To  insure  to  the 

*Ieyasu.     Cited  in  Dickenson's  Japan,  Ch.  VII. 

Trom  the  Japanese  Pliilosopher,  translated  by  Professor  George 
W.  Knox,  pp.  120,  130,  129.    Asiatic  Society  of  Japan,  1893. 

These  citations  and  those  in  Dickenson  are  to  be  found  in 
Gulick's  Evolution  of  the  Japanese,  pp.  251-253. 


THE    EMPIRE    OF    J.VPAN.  35 

empire  peace,  the  foundation  must  be  laid  in  the  ways  of 
holiness  and  religion;  and  if  men  think  they  can  be  edu- 
cated and  will  not  remember  this,  it  is  as  if  one  were  to 
go  to  a  forest  to  catch  fish,  or  try  to  draw  water  from 
fire."^ 

In  a  nation  where  such  sentiments  were  valued  by  the 
few,  if  not  by  the  many,  men  competent  to  revolutionize 
their  civic  affairs  were  found  a  few  years  ago,  who  availed 
themselves  at  once  of  the  political  wisdom  of  Christendom. 
The  old  laws  based  upon  the  Chinese,  and  so  modified  that 
the  lower  classes  had  practically  no  rights ;  the  ancient  pro- 
cedure, so  capricious;  and  the  monopoly  of  the  secrets  of 
the  law  books  by  the  judges;^ — all  were  swept  away  at 

*Ieyasu,  cited  in  Dickenson's  Japan,  Ch.  VII.  It  is  to  be 
observed  how  closely  all  this,  from  the  ancient  literature,  is  in 
accord  with  the  chivalric  and  metric  war  counsel  of  his  gracious 
majesty,  the  present  emperor  of  Japan, —  a  ruler  painstaking  and 
laborious,  conscientious  and  upright,  whose  heart  beats  towards 
his  people  with  a  father's  love,  and  in  whose  judgment  to  do  the 
thing  that  is  right  they  may  always  confide: 

"The  foe  that  strikes  thee  for  thy  country's  sake  — 
Strike  him  with  all  thy  might: 
But  while  thou  strik'st. 
Forget  not  still  to  love  him." 

— Translated  hy  A.  Lloyd. 

For  a  portion  of  the  phraseology  of  this  note  and  for  the  poetic 
citations  in  this  section,  the  author  is  under  obligation  to  a  press 
article  prepared  by  Mr.  Yone  Noguchi. 

'Europe  and  the  Far  East,  by  R.  K.  Douglas,  p.  200.  London, 
1904.  As  to  the  practical  working  of  the  present  constitution, 
it  is  stated  by  Dr.  D.  C.  Greene,  who  was  one  of  the  earliest  of 
the  American  philanthropists  in  this  field  at  a  critical  moment, 
who  well  knew  the  old  and  who  has  observed  the  new,  that  the 
lives  and  the  rights  of  the  common  people  are  now  much  safer 
than  under  the  former  order  of  things.  It  is  pertinent  to  add  in 
this  connection  the  remark  of  Marquis  Ito,  that  "Japan's  progress 
and  development  are  largely  due  to  the  influence  of  missionaries 
exerted  in  the  right  direction  when  Japan  was  first  studying  the 
outer  world."  So  alert  were  the  leaders  of  the  people  to  catch 
at  new  ideas. 


36  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

once,  and  civic  liberty  was  born  in  a  day, —  equality  before 
the  law,  representative  institutions,  religious  freedom,  and 
universal  education. 

III. 

More  than  to  any  other  influence,  the  durability  and 
unchangeableness  of  the  venerable  celestial  empire  has  been 
due  to  the  solidifying  work  of  Confucius  during  twenty-five 
hundred  years  in  forming  the  minds  of  the  most  intellectual 
youth  and  natural  leaders  of  thought.  If  it  were  said  that 
the  Confucian  system  has  had  a  more  important  relation 
to  the  state  than  it  has  had  to  any  other  Chinese  interest^ 
it  would  be  near  the  truth. 

With  not  infrequent  changes  of  dynasty,  the  government 
itself  has  been  one  of  the  most  stable  in  the  world,  with  four 
thousand  years  of  authentic  records,  and  a  thousand  years 
more  of  tradition.  Age  after  age  he  has  stood  for  God  in 
China,  representing  him  to  the  people, —  the  one  person 
among  hundreds  of  millions, —  whose  duty  it  has  been  to 
worship  the  Supreme  Being  in  behalf  of  all.  Responsible  to 
Heaven  for  ruling  in  virtue,^  he  has  been  the  one  source  of 
law  and  power,  and  as  the  patriarchal  head  of  the  great  Chi- 
nese family  he  has  been  the  owner  of  the  entire  national  soil, 
and  proprietor  of  all  its  resources.  Nor  has'  he  ruled  with 
unlimited  power ;  but  has  been  held  firmly  for  ages  within 
the  iron  grip  of  the  Confucian  system,  not  only  held  respon- 
sible to  the  Sovereign  of  the  Universe,  but  to  the  ancestral 
spirits  to  do  as  they  did,  held  from  age  to  age  to  a  conserva- 
tive respect  for  existing  institutions,  rarely  venturing  upon 
the  new,  and  held  to  observe  custom  in  the  administration 
of  the  government  through  the  six  boards, —  of  civil  office, 
of  war,  of  rites  (education  and  religion),  of  justice,  of 
finance,  and  of  public  w^orks.^ 

^The  secret  of  good  government  is  said  by  Confucius  to  be  the 
cultivation  of  personal  virtue  on  the  part  of  rulers. —  Martin's 
Lore  of  Cathay,  p.  175.  New  York,  1901. 

-For  two  authorities  upon  portions  of  this  paragraph,  consult 
Williamson's  North  China,  Vol.  I,  pp.  9-11,  London,  1870;  and 
President  Martin's  Cycle  of  Cathay,  1S9G. 


THE  CHINESE  EMPIRE.  37 

It  has  been  a  part  of  the  theory  that  the  rulers  are  less 
important  than  the  people;  there  has  always  been  local 
-autonomy,  even  under  the  most  despotic  rulers,  and  theoret- 
ically all  the  people  have  had  an  equal  chance  to  compete 
in  the  civil  service  examinations  for  administrative  posi- 
tions. Confucius  taught  the  right  of  rebellion,^  and  the 
right  of  regicide  was  taught  by  Mencius.  Criticism  of  the 
government  has  been  constantly  invited  through  a  board 
-of  censors,  who  have  not  been  without  political  influence. 
It  was,  however,  a  maxim  of  Confucius,  which  has  been 
learned  by  every  school-boy  for  three-score  and  ten  genera- 
tions, never  to  speak  disrespectfully  of  the  government, 
firmly  established  for  a  period  most  notable  in  history.  The 
governing  principles  of  the  Chinese  classics  have  tended 
also  to  strengthen  the  government  by  encouraging  habits 
of  content  and  industry  on  the  part  of  the  people ;  and  the 
ruling  class  has  been  so  steadfastly  held  to  maxims  that 
have  found  ample  play  within  the  empire,  that,  in  all  the 
ages,  the  Chinese  government  has  never  entered  upon  a 
system  of  national  aggression  and  foreign  conquest.  And 
it  was  true,  before  the  recent  overturning  in  the  empire, 
that  the  Chinese  code  of  laws,  and  in  many  particulars  the 
system  of  government,  bore  favorable  comparison  for  prac- 
tical wisdom  with  those  of  European  nations,  giving  a  high 
'degree  of  security   for  life   and  property.-     ''The   great 

*"The  divine  right  does  not  last  forever."  It  is  the  theory  that 
Heaven  gives  the  sovereign  his  right  to  rule;  and  if  his  rule  is 
"wrong  there  is  no  heavenly  decree  in  this  case,  and  rebellion  is 
right.  This  right  to  rebel  is  illustrated  in  a  valuable  paper  sent 
to  the  author  by  the  courtesy  of  Rev.  Arthur  H.  Smith,  D.  D.,  of 
the  North  China  mission.  In  this  paper  Mr.  Smith  cites  recent 
instances  in  which  the  people  have  rebelled  against  petty  magis- 
trates, and  the  imperial  government  has  acquiesced  in  their 
right  to  do  so  under  certain  circumstances.  Armed  resistance  in 
an  emergency,  or  petition  for  removal,  is  allowable.  "Heaven 
hears  through  the  ears  of  my  people,"  it  was  said  by  the  Emperor 
Shun. —  Cycle  of  Cathay,  p.  336. 

Wide  Dr.  Nevins'  China  and  the  Chinese,  p.  279,  New  York, 
1869;    and   revised   edition   of   1883.     Consult,   also,    The  Middle 


4,29858 


38  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

God,"  said  Tang,  the  founder  of  the  Shang  dynasty, 
eighteen  centuries  before  the  Christian  era,  "has  conferred 
even  on  the  inferior  people  a  moral  sense,  compliance  with 
which  would  show  their  nature  invariably  right.  To  make 
them  tranquilly  pursue  the  course  which  it  would  indicate 
is  the  work  of  the  sovereign."^ 

Each  Chinese  province  is,  however,  governed  independ- 
ently; under  the  central  government  but  not  by  it,  save 
through  officials  who  have  supreme  power  in  the  sphere 
assigned  them.  Practically  the  law  in  any  given  province 
is  the  will  of  the  magistrate,  a  government  not  of  laws  but 
of  men.  There  are,  besides  the  viceroy,  five  officials  whose 
authority  extends  over  the  whole  province;  others  have 
charge  of  subdivisions  called  circuits,  which  in  turn  are 
subdivided  into  prefectures,  which  are  subdivided  into 
districts. 

The  national  government,  says  Dr.  A.  H.  Smith,  in  the 
paper  referred  to  above,  is  that  of  a  carefully  balanced 
oligarchy.  "The  only  official  with  whom  ninety-nine  out 
of  every  hundred  Chinese  come  into  any  contact  is  the 
district  magistrate,  w^ho  is  to  the  people  the  direct  and 
visible  representative  of  the  imperial  power.  Of  these 
magistrates  there  are  probably  fourteen  or  fifteen  hundred 
in  actual  service,  and  as  theirs  is  only  seventh  among  the 
nine  grades  of  rank,  looked  at  from  above  they  appear  to 
be  very  insignificant  officials.  Viewed,  on  the  other  hand, 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  people,  the  district  magistrate 
is  a  much  more  important  personage  than  the  emperor,  Avho 
to  them  is  only  a  name  in  which  taxes  are  collected,  and 
which  is  sometimes  found  on  coins  and  always  in  the  nota- 
tion   of    dates.     The    district    magistrate    is   (vicariously) 

Kingdom,  by  Professor  S.  Wells  Williams  of.  Yale  University,  p. 
95,  New  York;  edition  of  1848.  These  popular  safeguards  exist 
in  the  laws;  their  enforcement  against  hordes  of  robbers  in  every- 
district  is  difficult.  The  Chinese  government  is  revising  its  laws 
at  the  present  time,  seeking  to  avail  itself  of  the  principles 
which  have  been  tested  by  generations  of  Western  experience. 
'Legge's  Religions  of  China,  p.  98.    London,  1880. 


TnE    CHINESE    EMPIRE.  39 

called  the  father  and  mother  of  the  people.  Like  the 
emperor  himself,  he  is  hedged  about  by  restrictions,  but 
within  his  limits  his  word  is  for  the  time  law. ' ' 

The  patriarchal  system  is  in  force  throughout  the  entire 
administrative  service.  When  a  mandarin  is  seated  under 
a  canopy  for  the  conduct  of  the  affairs  of  the  people,  the 
legend  upon  the  canopy  is  inscribed, — "Ye  are  all  my 
children." 

Curiously  enough,  this  patriarchal  idea  may,  through  the 
family  council,  supersede  the  work  of  the  district  magis- 
trate. The  grandsire,  at  the  head  of  a  very  large  family, 
may  combine  with  others  of  the  same  stock  (using  the  same 
glebe  lands,  the  same  cemetery,  the  same  temple)  for  the 
control  of  a  village,  and  be  really  indifferent  to  the  civil 
government,  sometimes  going  so  far  as  to  administer  the 
death  penalty  in  a  furtive  way.^  This  illustrates  what  has 
been  said  of  the  present  day  survival  of  primitive  customs 
among  certain  backward  races, —  in  this  case  a  custom  forty 
or  fifty  generations  earlier  than  Confucius.  This  survival 
of  clan  life  gives  an  air  of  freedom  to  the  villagers;  no 
people  in  the  world,  says  Llartin,  being  more  exempt  from 
official  interference. 

So  powerful  is  the  family  that  a  provincial  magistrate  is 
forbidden  by  law  to  take  a  post  within  two  hundred  miles 
of  his  birthplace,  or  to  marry  within  the  district  assigned 
to  him,  lest  he  acquire  too  great  an  influence  that  may  be 
exercised  against  the  government. 

The  officeholders  are  ill-paid,  and  receive  their  stipend 
not  directly  from  the  government  but  they  deduct  their  own 
pay  when  remitting  taxes.  Their  term  is  limited  to  three 
years,  in  order  that  other  men  who  have  passed  the  civil 
service  examinations  may  have  a  chance, —  the  educational 
system  of  the  country  always  yielding  a  surplus  of  men 
waiting  to  take  office.  These  men  from  all  over  China  have 
given  expensive  years  to  preparing  for  their  examinations, 
and  when  set  up  in  a  brief  authority  it  is  now  or  never  to 

^Cycle  of  Cathay,  pp.  334-335. 


40  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

acquire  a  competency.  The  central  government  can  always 
hire  officials  at  a  low  figure,  and  it  requires  at  their  hands 
a  certain  income,  and  requires,  moreover,  that  maladmin- 
istration shall  not  be  so  excessive  as  to  come  to  the  ears  of 
the  emperor.  Mandarins  growing  rich  by  improper  meth- 
ods are  brought  to  an  account.^ 

The  Chinese  writers  assert  that  among  the  district  man- 
darins corruption  is  the  rule,  and  integrity  the  exception.^ 
Professor  R.  K.  Douglas,  in  the  British  Encyclopedia,  says 
that  the  corruption  of  the  provincial  governments  is  due 
to  the  underpayment  of  the  officials,  and  to  the  sharp  lim- 
itation of  the  official  term;  and  that  justice  itself  is  in  the 
market.  There  are  other  testimonies  to  match.  Alexander 
AVilliamson,^  an  intelligent,  acute,  and  studious  observer 
a  third  of  a  century  since,  says  that  the  most  part  of  the 
rulers  did  not  in  his  day  live  according  to  the  moral  maxims 
of  their  classics;  that  officials  bought  their  way  to  power, 
and  then  plundered  the  people.  A  mere  handful  of  officials, 
a  score  or  two  out  of  thousands,  had  helpful  notions  of 
social  and  civil  progress.  The  imperial  government,  need- 
ing money,  had  disposed  of  the  offices  for  money,  rather 
than  by  the  strict  merit  system  contemplated  in  the  scheme 
for  competitive  examinations;  the  officials  were  indeed 
selected  from  the  literary  class,  but  from  the  corrupt  part 
of  it.  Those  of  the  better  sort  understood  this,  and  com- 
plained of  it.  Eussell  H.  Conwell,  LL.  D.,  of  Philadel- 
phia, studied  the  Chinese  question  in  China  some  years  ago, 
and  reported  that  the  practical  operation  of  the  govern- 
ment at  that  time  (1870)  was,  in  respect  to  justice,  hin- 
dered by  bribery;  that  by  it  just  laws  failed  of  execution, 
that  criminals  with  plunder  enough  to  divide  with  the 

*"A  merchant  may  keep  his  wealth,  but  not  a  mandarin,  unless 
he  conceals  it  with  great  skill." —  Martin,  Cycle  of  Cathay,  p.  332. 

^"We  all  deserve  death,"  said  a  mandarin  to  an  Occidental 
friend,  "but-  it  would  be  no  use  for  the  emperor  to  kill  us,  as 
those  taking  our  places  would  be  as  bad." —  Private  Letter  from 
Dr.  Stanley,  of  Tien  Tsin,  to  the  Author. 

^North  China,  Vol.  I,  pp.  4-8. 


THE  CHINESE  EMPIRE,  41 

officers  of  the  law  were  left  to  pursue  their  courses;  that 
bribery  for  the  sons  of  the  wealthy  interfered  with  the 
required  civil  service  examinations;  that  money  advanced 
ignorance  over  merit. 

Another  authority  is  Lansdell's  Chinese  Central  Asia}  It 
represents  the  outcome  of  some  thousands  of  years  of  Con- 
fucianism in  its  relation  to  civil  liberty.  The  author  quotes 
from  Dr.  Seeland:  "As  for  the  administration  (of  Chinese 
Turkistan),  it  is  enough  to  say  that  it  is  Chinese  and  of 
that  the  worst  kind,  by  reason  of  its  extreme  distance  from 
headquarters  and  of  the  despotism  which  so  easily  takes 
root  in  a  conquered  country."  "The  Chinese  officials, 
civil  and  military,  are  composed  of  adventurers,  generally 
very  coarse  and  avaricious,  whilst  the  private  soldiers  are 
recruited  for  the  most  part  from  the  criminal  exiles." 
This  authority  quotes  Prjevalsky,  journeying  through  the 
province  of  Sin  Kiang  in  1884:  "Crying  injustice,  espion- 
age, rapacity,  grinding  taxation,  tyranny  of  officials, —  in  a 
word,  entire  absence  of  all  ideas  of  legality  in  all  adminis- 
trative or  judicial  matters  —  such  are  the  leading  charac- 
teristics of  the  Chinese  rule.  We  ourselves,"  he  adds  — 
and  he  was  a  Russian  — ' '  Witnessed  scenes  which  made  our 
very  blood  boil."  Lansdell  adds  that  English  travelers, 
passing  through,  receive  a  more  favorable  impression  than 
is  given  by  the  members  of  the  Russian  consulate  —  as 
those  above  quoted  —  who  have  lived  in  the  country  for 
years. 

Now  it  is  easy  to  see  that  Chinese  travelers  in  England 
or  America  might  easily  misrepresent  the  facts  in  regard 
to  provincial  or  territorial  misgovernment ;  but  no  Warren 
Hastings  trial  has  yet  occurred  in  Pekin,  nor  does  Confu- 
cian public  opinion  demand  it.  It  would  be  easy  for  Chi- 
nese scholars  to  search  the  annals  of  Christendom,  and 
select  here  and  there  the  material  for  an  appalling  indict- 
ment of  Christianity  for  bribery  and  frauds  and  maladmin- 
istration in  civil  affairs.  To  say  nothing  of  the  records  of 
*Vol.  II,  pp.  241,  242,  244,  245.     London,  1893. 


42  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

reptilian  centuries  farther  away  from  our  time,  he  would 
pick  up  no  small  scandal  in  the  first  part  of  Trevelyan's 
Charles  James  Fox.  Yet  if  he  were  to  do  so,  he  would,  in 
telling  the  whole  truth  to  his  countrymen,  make  a  point  to 
the  effect  that  China  is  to-day  worse  than  Christendom  at 
its  worst;  and  that  the  very  capable  statesmen  of  China 
have  no  small  task  before  them  in  placing  their  nation 
abreast  of  this  age  in  guaranteeing  the  civil  rights  of  the 
average  citizen. 

I  will  refer  to  only  one  more  testimony, —  that  of  one 
generation  since,  by  Dr.  Henry  M.  Field  of  New  York.  It 
relates  to  civil  freedom  as  protected  by  the  criminal  court 
procedure:  There  is  no  trial  by  jury;  there  are  no  lawyers 
or  defense ;  the  accused  stands  alone,  and  is  presumed  to  be 
guilty  till  he  can  prove  his  innocence;  if  it  be  a  capital 
crime  of  which  he  is  charged,  he  cannot  be  executed  unless 
he  confesses  guilt,  but  he  is  tortured  beyond  common  endur- 
ance to  make  him  confess. 

Concerning  all  of  which,  it  is  suitable  to  inquire  whether 
our  Confucianist  brethren  are  not  at  least  some  generations 
behind  their  Christian  contemporaries  in  respect  to  the 
safeguards  of  civil  liberty. 

It  was  one  of  the  sayings  of  Professor  S.  Wells  Williams, 
who  resided  long  in  China,  that  life  in  the  empire  is  like 
life  in  a  stage  coach;  one  can  never  know  the  moment  in 
which  it  will  upset.  The  nation,  badly  shaken  by  the  late 
Chinese  and  Japanese  war,  and  by  the  more  recent  war  of 
the  European  powers  caused  by  the  Chinese  Boxers,  has 
however  awakened  to  a  new  consciousness  of  power  through 
the  influence  of  Japan's  recent  military  success,  and  ancient 
civic  wrongs  are  likely  to  be  righted.  Nor  can  the  student 
of  European  history  be  impatient  if  civic  reform  requires 
many  generations. 

One  thing  which  impedes  the  movement  is  the  weakness 
of  the  empire  through  lack  of  common  interest.  Contrary 
to  a  common  idea  that  China  is  a  unit,  there  are  three  main 
subdivisions:  the  ruling  class  of  Tartars,  once  so  warlike; 


THE    CHINESE    EMPIRE.  43^ 

the  true  Chinese  north  of  the  Yang-tse-Kiang ;  and,  soutk 
of  the  river,  an  assortment  of  provincials  as  different  from 
the  Chinese  and  from  each  other  in  languages  and  customs 
as  the  varied  nationalities  of  Europe,  controlled  by  the 
imperial  government  in  accord  with  certain  ancient  feudal 
usages.  The  people,  busy  with  their  industries,  leave  gov- 
ernment to  the  ruling  class.  Popularly  there  is  little  devo- 
tion to  the  imperial  government;  no  public  spirit,  na 
enthusiastic  loyalty,  no  patriotism  pervades  the  multitude. 
The  only  union  of  interest  between  the  common  people  of 
the  different  provinces  is  that  of  opposition  to  foreigners.^ 
To  make  the  matter  worse,  as  to  the  internal  weakness  of 
the  empire,  the  literati  during  some  ages  have  undervalued 
the  importance  of  the  military  class,  it  being  only  since 
the  Japanese-Russian  war  that  the  armed  power  of  China 
has  begun  to  be  organized  upon  modern  lines.  Taking  into 
account  all  the  conditions,  the  civic  body  has  sustained  such 
shocks  within  a  few  years  as  to  have  made  it  for  a  time- 
seem  doubtful  to  many  European  publicists  whether  the 
nation,  if  left  to  itself,  could  longer  hold  together  and  sus- 
tain itself  as  an  independent  power.  It  being,  however,, 
to  the  interest  of  great  powers  to  undergird  the  national 
unity,  the  empire  is  now  entering  upon  a  new  career  of 
life  and  of  unwonted  energy,  through  internal  transforma- 
tions wrought  by  the  ablest  men  in  the  country, —  civic 
reforms  so  radical  that  no  backward  movement  is  now 
possible. 

At  a  banquet  in  Boston,  February,  1906,  given  to  the 
Chinese  commissioners,  who  are  to  report  to  their  govern- 
ment the  changes  most  needful  for  placing  China  in  the 
front  rank  as  to  <jivic  reform,  Sir  Chengturig  Liang-Cheng, 

*This  is  not  due  to  religious  sentiment;  Ctiina  is  the  most  toler- 
ant of  lands  towards  Buddhists,  Mohammedans,  Roman  Catholics 
and  Protestants  alike.  {Cycle  of  Cathay,  p.  326.)  But  it  is  due 
to  an  injudicious  violation  of  most  serious  popular  superstitions 
by  foreigners,  often  through  ignorance,  and  often  through  a  care- 
less disregard  of  what  to  the  offender  seems  trivial;  and  due  to^ 
the  fear  of  industrial  changes  detrimental  to  the  popular  interest- 


44  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

Chinese  ambassador  to  the  United  States,  emphasized  the 
current  revolution  in  civic  thought  by  which  China  may 
already  be  spoken  of  as  a  modern  nation,  and  no  longer  as 
the  ancient  empire.  The  brightest  of  the  Chinese  states- 
men, however,  must  find  it  difficult  to  so  handle  their  popu- 
lation of  hundreds  of  millions  as  to  change  the  policy  of 
ages  in  a  day.  Forty  centuries  of  prejudice,  entertained 
by  a  population  more  than  twice  as  great  as  that  of  the 
■combined  people  of  Great  Britain  and  Germany  and  the 
United  States,  can  be  dealt  with  only  by  some  generations 
of  patient  education,  through  broad-minded  and  acute  men, 
versed  in  affairs  and  actuated  by  an  altruistic  spirit,  in 
order  to  coordinate  the  civic  ideals  of  Cathay  with  those 
<)i  Christendom. 

IV. 

"All  the  Sons  of  Adam  are  equal,  like  the  teeth  of  a 
-comb."  "A  man  who  appoints  any  man  to  an  office,"  it 
is  written,  ''when  there  is  in  his  dominion  another  man 
better  qualified  for  it,  sins  against  God  and  against  the 
state. ' '  Such  was  the  civic  ideal  of  the  early  Moslem  state : 
both  the  democracy  of  desert  rangers  and  a  well-ordered 
life  in  the  towns.  In  India,  Mohammedanism  has  done 
much  to  break  the  bonds  of  caste  by  proclaiming  the  broth- 
•erhood  of  believers.  Yet  Islam  politically  —  in  the  prac- 
tical worldng  of  the  ages  in  dealing  with  diverse  peoples  — 
has  proved  itself  to  be  of  cast  iron;  and  the  casting  was 
made  twelve  hundred  years  ago. 

"The  duty  of  unquestioning  obedience,"  remarks  Pro- 
fessor Bryce,  "and  the  habit  of  blind  submission  to  author- 
ity dominate  and  pervade  the  Mussulman  mind  so  com- 
pletely that  its  only  idea  in  government  is  despotism. 
Nothing  approaching  to  a  free  ruling  assembly,  either  pri- 
mary or  representative,  has  sprung  up  in  a  Mussulman 
-country. '  '^ 

This  despotism  is,  however,  the  choice  of  Islam  as  such. 
"^Studies  in  History  and  Jurisprudence,  p.  C63.     Oxford,  1901. 


MOSLEM    LANDS.  45 

As  the  pre-Moslem  Arabic  tribes  elected  their  own  chiefs, 
so,  after  ]\Iohammed 's  death,  they  elected  a  leader  of  Islam; 
and  to  this  day  the  leader  must  be  elected  by  the  Moslem 
community.  "The  democracy  of  Islam,"  says  Macdonald, 
"is  a  real  thing,  but  it  believes  that  it  can  achieve  itself 
best  through  giving  complete  control  to  one ;  it  is  in  a  sense 
Carlyle's  hero-theory."  Although  each  new  Ottoman  sov- 
ereign rules  by  hereditary  right,  his  spiritual  supreme  lead- 
e7-ship  comes  through  his  election  by  the  canon  lawj^ers  and 
divines  of  Constantinople.  So  elected,  he  is  the  ruler  of 
the  entire  Moslem  world.  He  must,  however,  rule  under 
the  divine  law,  and  the  people  can  depose  him  if  he  breaks 
it ;  "  the  despotism  is  modified  by  the  sacred  right  of  insur- 
rection." The  sultan  can,  however,  never  become  a  con- 
stitutional ruler  through  setting  up  an  assembly  with  rights 
that  may  be  exercised  against  himself.^ 

In  administering  the  government,  the  Church  and  state 
being  one,  it  has  been  assumed  by  some  that  the  Koran  is 
an  absolute  legal  code,  but  a  study  of  the  sources  of  ]\Ioslem 
jurisprudence  shows  that  it  is  no  product  of  the  desert 
or  of  the  mind  of  Mohanuned,  but  a  system  elaborated  by 
the  early  lawyers  of  Islam,  who  recognized  their  respon- 
sibility for  administering  justice  upon  principles  applicable 
to  agricultural  and  town  life  as  well  as  that  of  nomadic 
tribes.  According  to  the  principles  adopted  by  the  great 
minds  of  Islam  the  Koran  is  only  one  authority :  prophetic 
usage  being  another, —  the  custom  of  Mohammed  as  handed 
down  in  tradition  having  overborne  much  that  is  perfectly 
clear  in  the  Koran ;  the  analogy  of  the  Koranic  text  and  of 
tradition  being  the  third  well-defined  principle  of  Moslem 
law;  the  other  source  is  called  the  principle  of  Ijma,  the 
agreement, —  the  prophet  having  actually  or  traditionally 
affirmed  that  God  would  not  allow  his  people  to  err, —  so 
that  whatever  the  community  of  Islam  has  agreed  upon  at 

^Development  of  Muslim  Theology,  Jurisprudence  and  Constitu- 
tional Theory,  by  Duncan  Black  Macdonald,  LL,  D.,  New  York, 
1903,  pp.  8,  54,  55,  58,  59. 


46  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

any  time  is  of  God.^  The  agreement  effected  by  the  con- 
sultative councils  of  the  immediate  companions  of  Moham- 
med came  in  the  first  generation  to  assume  an  importance 
second  only  to  the  words  of  Mohammed  himself :  their  voice 
was  accepted  as  the  voice  of  the  church,  their  agreement 
final.  And  never  since  has  this  principle  been  left  to 
slumber.  The  common  sense  of  the  Moslem  community  — 
when  once  accepted  as  the  common  sense  —  has  in  the  past 
set  aside  the  undoubted  words  of  the  Koran.  In  this  way 
laws  have  been  made  or  abrogated.  The  agreement,  in 
the  end,  is  the  final  matter;  half  unconsciously,  it  settles 
everything.  It  is  the  principle  of  unity  in  Islam;  in  it  is 
the  possibility  of  progress.- 

The  government  of  Turkey,  to-day,  is  a  military  occu- 
pancy of  non-Mohammedan  lands.  It  rules  by  force.  The 
subject  peoples  are  political  aliens.  No  rights  are  secure 
unless  by  purchase.  Nor  can  there  ever  be  equality  of 
rights,  since  infidel  evidence  when  opposed  to  Mussulman 
evidence  can  never  be  accepted  by  the  state.  And  as  to 
religious  toleration:  freedom  of  judgment,  liberty  of  crit- 
icism, candid  and  free  investigation  of  the  truth  of  Islam 
are  out  of  the  question, —  the  sword  being  by  law  inevitable. 
Persia,  whose  people  are  Moslems,  warns  Christians  against 
proselyting. 

Certain  points  in  the  practical  working  of  a  Moslem  gov- 
ernment are  noted  in  the  United  States  Consular  Reports 
upon  Labor  in  Foreign   Countries    (1884)  :   The  Turkish 

^These  four  sources  of  Islamic  law  do  not  appear  to  have  been 
generally  recognized  by  Occidental  students  who  have  not  made  a 
specialty  of  Arabic  jurisprudence, —  who  speak  as  if  the  Koran 
alone  were  the  unquestioned,  unerring  and  unchangeable  author- 
ity, leaving  the  state  for  all  time  with  no  power  to  adapt  itself 
to  new  conditions.  Compare  Muir's  Mahomet  and  Islam,  pp.  243, 
240,  third  edition,  revised.  New  York,  1895;  Freeman's  Ottoman 
Power  in  Europe,  p.  63,  London,  1877;  Bryce's  Studies  in  History 
and  Jurisprudence,  pp.  661,  662,  Oxford,  1901. 

==As  authority  upon  this  entire  paragraph,  vide  Macdonald's 
Development  of  Muslim  Theology,  Jurisprudence  and  Constitu- 
tional Theory,  pp.  72,  73,  83,  84,  105,  107,  111,  113,  New  York,  1903. 


MOSLEM    LANDS.  47 

government  takes  almost  no  interest  in  anything  that  con- 
cerns the  welfare  of  its  subjects:  instead  of  a  happy  and 
prosperous  people,  one  sees  on  every  hand  oppression  and 
suffering,  ignorance  and  degradation:  the  government  is 
so  administered  as  to  be  but  an  organized  system  of  tyranny 
and  robbery;  it  does  nothing  for  internal  improvements, 
and  prohibits  the  introduction  of  foreign  capital  to  develop 
the  resources  of  the  country;  the  working  people  pay  one- 
fifth  of  the  taxes  but  exercise  no  political  rights,  the  few 
officers  not  appointed  by  the  general  government  being 
chosen  by  the  wealthy  class:  interest  for  ready  money  has 
no  regular  rate  established  by  the  government,  but  varies 
from  thirty  to  one  hundred  per  cent. ;  farmers  often  paying 
from  fifty  to  one  hundred. 

The  right  to  rule  several  million  Mussulman  has  been 
lately  purchased  by  the  government  of  the  United  States. 
In  British  realms  there  are  seventy  millions  of  them;  and 
through  Mohammed  Ali  in  Egypt,  England  is  to-day  show- 
ing to  the  world  what  can  be  done  by  giving  a  good  govern- 
ment and  western  culture  to  a  Mohammedan  people. 

V. 

Before  stating  the  relation  of  Christianity  to  civil  free- 
dom, the  main  idea  underlying  Christianity  itself  should 
be  alluded  to  —  the  very  foundation  of  all  it  has  wrought. 

In  the  social  evolution  of  the  Christian  nations  there  has 
been  one  idea  germinating,  growing,  bearing  fruit  during 
three  score  and  ten  generations,  nor  has  the  writer  been 
able  to  find  its  like  in  the  sacred  literature  or  the  history 
of  races  actuated  by  other  great  religions :  an  early  tradi- 
tional and  patriarchal  idea  set  forth  by  the  prophets  and 
so  firmly  held  that  there  was  an  expectation  of  universal 
dominion  through  the  Hebrew  Messiah.  This  idea,  that 
the  God  of  nature  and  of  providence  is  also  the  Moral  Gov- 
ernor, enters  into  the  whole  texture  of  the  earlier  and  later 
Hebrew  books.     This   fundamental  conception   was  made 


48  CIVIC    CONDITIONS, 

paramount  by  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  who  set  forth  this  king- 
dom as  unworldly,  a  moral  rule  of  righteousness.  This 
doctrine  was  widely  disseminated  by  the  apostles.  The 
Christian  Church  seized  upon  it,  and  during  many  centuries 
added  to  it  the  Roman  habit  of  thought,  and  the  imperial 
aspiration  for  universal  sovereignty.'  Christian  emperors 
and  kings  advanced  it.  The  Germanic  stock  and  the 
English  speaking  peoples,  with  their  genius  for  self-gov- 
ernment, finally  became  imbued  with  it,  and  other  Chris- 
tian peoples  have  felt  its  power.  Through  the  social  influ- 
ence of  this  silent,  invisible  force,  the  nations  of  Christen- 
dom have  wrought  out  in  recent  generations  the  highest 
degree  of  human  liberty,  in  a  measure  regulated  by  the 
principles  that  underlie  the  moral  law,  which  the  world 
has  known  in  all  the  ages  of  history,  and  these  ideas  they 
are  now  advancing  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe.  No  such 
idea  of  domination  has  wrought  among  Brahmanical 
people.  The  Buddhists  have  studiously  ignored  political 
relations.  Confucian  thought  has  never  looked  for  a  con- 
trolling civic  influence  beyond  the  limits  of  China.  Moham- 
medanism has  never  conceived  of  a  universal  reign  through 
moral  principles  embodied  in  a  popular  government. 

Many  forces  have  worked  to  favor  this  idea:  one  is  the 
principle  of  association,  or  the  combination  of  those  having 
a  sense  of  likeness  in  kind,  which  has  always  been  one  of 
the  greatest  powers  in  social  evolution.  From  a  period  as 
far  away  as  that  of  Socrates  till  now,  the  Hebrew  thought 
of  a  divinely  ordered  people,  destined  to  serve  as  a  divine 
instrument  in  the  earth,  has  been  held  more  or  less  firmly 
by  no  small  body  of  people  united  by  this  idea.  If  Brah- 
mans  have  to  some  extent  associated  in  sub-castes,  they 
have  held  themselves  apart  as  of  a  different  order  from  the 
average  Hindu;  Buddhism  has  flourished  through  festal 
days  and  a  monastic  order,  but  by  its  theory  has  pronounced 

'"The  two  great  ideas  which  expiring  antiquity  bequeathed  to 
the  ages  that  followed  were  those  of  a  world-monarchy  and  a 
world-religion." — Bryce's  Holy  Roman  Empire,  p.  99. 


A    KINGDOM    OF    LOVE. 


49 


domestic,  social  and  political  associations  undesirable;  Con- 
fucius built  up  a  literary  order  in  China  with  no  common 
bond  of  love  among  myriads  of  people;  Mohammed  never 
emphasized  love  as  a  motive.  It  has  been  left  for  Chris- 
tianity alone  to  carry  out  the  early  patriarchal  and  pro- 
phetic ideas  of  founding  through  popular  association  a 
kingdom  of  just  rule  and  of  brotherly  love  in  society 
throughout  the  earth.  It  has  been  proved  beyond  cavil 
that  the  firmest  law  of  social  cohesion  is  the  law  of  love. 
This  was  the  theory  of  Jesus.  The  idea  of  love  —  God's 
love  to  man,  man's  answering  love,  and  mutual  love  among; 
men, —  secures  the  most  harmonious  cooperation  and  dimin- 
ishes the  waste  of  social  life. 

During  all  these  centuries  of  its  development,  the  power 
of  association  in  Christendom  in  its  essential  bond  of  union 
has  been  enhanced  by  associate  worship  and  stated  fes- 
tivities. Ancestral  worship  among  the  Chinese  observes 
fixed  occasions;  both  Brahmans  and  Buddhists  maintain 
numerous  feast  days  and  pilgrimages;  the  Llohammedans 
have  a  weekly  service,  a  long  yearly  fast,  and  a  sacred 
journey  at  least  once  in  a  life-time  to  Mecca.  As  a  social 
force  the  three  yearly  feasts  of  Judaism  were  of  inestimable 
value.  And  their  Sabbath  gatherings  as  continued  by  the 
Lord's  day  Christian  service,  have  throughout  an  unbroken 
succession  of  weeks  for  more  than  three  thousand  years 
affected  vast  multitudes  of  people,  prompting  moral  and 
intellectual  evolution  in  world-wide  relations  during  a  hun- 
dred generations :  and  the  underlying  idea  of  a  divine  king- 
dom among  men  has  been  made  prominent  by  frequent 
gatherings  at  fixed  times  "about  the  Lord's  Table"  to  com- 
memorate the  love  of  God  to  man,  to  renew  with  God  the 
covenant  of  answering  human  love,  and  to  renew  the  solemn 
vows  of  love  between  man  and  man :  nor  can  anyone  under- 
stand one  of  the  great  sources  of  power  in  Christendom, 
who  does  not  take  into  account  the  sociological  weight  of 
these  customs  so  universally  observed  age  after  age.  Like 
a  fountain  of  living  streams  the  altruistic  spirit  of  Chris- 
4 


50  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

tianity  lias  been  maintained  in  ceaseless  outflow  by  the 
force  of  association  in  an  orderly  Christian  society.  To  a 
measurable  extent,  these  ideas  of  fraternity  among  men 
have  been  embodied  in  the  civil  institutes  of  Christendom. 
Indeed  the  law  of  love  as  set  forth  by  Jesus  Christ  is 
much  more  than  an  ordinary  social  well  wishing  and  more 
than  a  love  feast.  It  is  a  law  of  self-sacrifice  for  others. 
It  is  impossible  to  have  society  without  an  abnegation  of 
part  of  one's  individual  rights  in  view  of  the  higher  good 
of  being  an  essential  member  of  the  society,  partaking  of 
the  benefits  of  mutual  service.  And  so  great  is  the  sociolog- 
ical value  of  combination  that  it  may  be  fairly  inquired, 
as  between  five  great  religions,  which  most  encourages  and 
facilitates  not  only  an  altruistic  spirit  but  a  spirit  of  self- 
sacrifice  for  others,  some  degree  of  which  is  essential  to 
having  society  at  all.  The  combination  of  individuals  for 
mutual  service  is  not  only  the  best  society  but  the  most 
progressive.  "Where  there  is  the  most  coopei'ation  there  is 
the  least  contending.  Individual  violence,  and  unwilling- 
ness to  bear  burdens  —  share  and  share  alike, —  involve 
social  waste.  These  ideas  are  the  tests  for  the  religions: 
■which  of  them  is  at  bottom  doing  the  most  for  social  prog- 
ress at  its  highest  and  best?  All  problems  of  political  life 
are  solved  by  the  law  of  self-sacrifice  for  others;  and  this 
principle,  which  has  come  down  from  hoary  ages,  is  a  life 
power  in  the  activity  of  myriads  of  devotees  in  Christendom 
who  seek  for  it  universal  sway  among  men, 

VI. 

Rude  indeed  were  the  sons  of  Israel  when  first  appearing 
as  an  agricultural  people  —  courageous,  crafty,  treacher- 
ous, vengeful,  fond  of  adventure,  clannish,  with  little  devel- 
oped sense  of  nationality,  yet  sharply  separated  by  certain 
crude  ideas  in  spiritual  things  from  Oriental  tribes  still 
nomadic,  and  from  the  nameless  hordes  w^ho  raised  the 
massive  tiers  of  the  pyramids,  or  who  baked  the  clay  for 


HEBREW    CIVIC   THOUGHT.  61 

Babylon,  or  who  handled  the  memorial  stones  of  Nineveh, — 
so  rude  in  life,  so  crude  in  thought,  and  apparently  so  little 
distinguishable  from  the  earliest  men  of  other  racial  stocks, 
that  it  were  a  most  difficult  task  to  indicate  with  certainty 
the  sequence  of  those  civic  ideas  which  were  ultimately 
embodied  in  the  Old  and  the  New  Testaments.  If,  in  part, 
the  sources  were  older  than  Hebrew  thought,  yet  it  was 
through  the  Hebrews  that  the  ideas  were  widely  diffused, 
and  from  more  than  three  score  of  their  manuscripts  pre- 
pared by  less  than  two  score  authors,  now  bound  together 
as  so-called  Sacred  Literature  —  all  having  certain  charac- 
teristics in  common, —  we  learn  much  concerning  the  ger- 
minal ideas  which  entered  into  Christian  politics  in  after 
ages. 

God  was  set  forth  in  the  early  and  late  Hebrew  books  as 
the  ultimate  source  of  government.  "There  is  no  power 
but  of  God;  the  powers  that  be  are  ordained  of  God." 
The  magistrate  is  in  the  place  of  God,  as  to  the  conduct  of 
civic  affairs;  and  he  is  responsible  to  God  for  it.  If  he  is 
a  bad  ruler,  he  is  to  be  overthrown.  Oppression  is  accursed. 
In  all  this,  the  state  is  recognized  as  a  divinely  appointed 
instrumentality,  as  truly  so  as  the  family  or  the  church.^ 

Upon  this  point,  essentially  the  theory  of  Christendom  is 
not  other  than  that  held  by  Confucians,  and  only  in  some 
of  its  details  is  it  variant  from  the  other  great  religions  of 
the  world.  This  is  not  different  from  the  dictum  of  Alger- 
non Sidney,  that  the  liberties  of  a  people  are  from  God 
and  not  from  kings. 

It  was  assumed  by  the  great  seers  of  Israel  that  Jehovah 
was  the  Over-ruler  of  the  Jewish  kings,  as  once  the  national 
leader  and  guide  in  the  earlier  days  of  theocracy;  the  tra- 
ditions indeed  protesting  against  a  monarchy,  and  hedging 
it  about  with  restrictions, —  the  king  should  not  be  a  for- 
eigner, should  not  establish  a  harem,  that  he  should  not 

^Romans  13:  1-5.  Titus  3:1.  I  Peter  2:  13,  14.  Isaiah  60:  17. 
Deut.  25:  1;  2  Chronicles  19:  6,  7.  Psalms  149:  6-9;  Eccl.  5:  8; 
Jer.  5:  28,  29.     Isaiah  14.     I  Tim.  2:  2. 


6^  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

revel  in  silver  and  gold,  should  not  create  a  military  power 
by  multiplying  horses,  that  his  heart  should  not  be  lifted 
up  above  his  brethren,  that  he  should  be  versed  in  the 
divine  law  and  not  turn  from  it.^ 

The  Hebrew  land  was  divided  into  tribal  provinces,  then 
subdivided  among  the  families  as  an  inalienable  estate,^ 
and  none  could  sell  the  use  of  land  for  crops  for  a  term 
exceeding  fifty  years  or  until  the  year  of  jubilee,  when  the 
use  returned,  so  that  the  poorest  could  start  anew  in  landed 
equality  with  others.  To  this  end  the  landmarks  were 
rigidly  preserved  age  after  age.  This  establishment  of 
the  Hebrew  people  upon  inalienable  small  farms,  and  this 
provision  for  reinstating  the  poor,  carried  out  in  practice 
for  so  many  generations  before  the  Christian  era,  was 
favorable  to  home  building.  And  the  purity  and  honor  of 
home  life  were  protected  by  law.^ 

During  a  period  much  longer  than  that  since  America 
was  discovered,  the  Palestinian  ideal  made  prominent  the 
unfolding  of  domestic  virtues  and  industry,  the  evolution 
of  intellectual  and  moral  pov/er  through  a  certain  schooling 
for  youth,  and  through  a  weekly  synagogue  service  in 
which  the  commonality  bore  a  part  in  exposition  of  the  law 
and  public  discussion,  and  through  a  ritual  that  constantly 
brought  to  mind  the  relation  of  every  household  to  God, 
and  through  national  religious  festivals  three  times  a  year, 
in  which  ultimately  Jerusalem  became  the  centre  of  a 
statedly  transient  population  sometimes  twice  that  of  Rome. 
And  as  to  wide  social  relations,  there  were  constantly  grow- 
ing up  in  these  Jewish  homes  young  men  of  great  capacity 
for  doing  business,  who  went  out  into  all  Oriental  lands 

>Ex.  19:  5-8;  24:  3.  Hosea  13:  11.  "I  have  given  thee  a  king 
in  mine  anger.     I  Samuel  8:  7-22.     Deut.  17:  14-20. 

^This  accorded  with  certain  ancient  usage.  It  was  mentioned 
by  Strabo  that  the  Dalmatians  redistributed  the  land  every  eight 
years. 

'Leviticus  25:  14-16,  23,  10,  13,  28.  A  house  in  a  walled  city 
could  be  sold  in  perpetuity.  Lev.  25:  30.  Deut.  19:  14;  27:  17. 
Exodus  20:  14,  12. 


HEBREW    CIVIC   THOUGHT.  53 

to  traffic;  there  being  a  million  of  them  residing  in  Egypt 
at  the  Christian  era. 

The  political  ideas,  which  in  a  measure  governed  their 
social  evolution  included  that  of  an  impartial  standing 
before  the  law.  This,  in  the  words  of  Dean  Milman, 
^'annihilated  at  once  the  artificial  and  tyrannical  distinc- 
tion of  caste,  and  established  political  equality  as  one  of 
the  fundamental  principles  of  the  state."  All  men  were 
lield  to  be  equal  in  value  before  God  as  his  children :  ' '  Have 
we  not  all  one  Father?  Hath  not  one  God  created  us?"^ 
The  first  of  rights  is  equalit3^  Nurtured  during  hundreds 
of  years,  this  bore  fruit  in  the  Christian  dogma  of  the 
brotherhood  of  man :  * '  Love  worketh  no  ill  to  his  neighbor ' ' ; 
"Bear  ye  one  another's  burdens."  Tending  at  first  to 
break  down  social  and  political  distinctions,  it  ultimately 
affected  slavery  and  all  civic  disabilities.-     Its  breadth  of 

*Malachi  2:  10.  Lev.  25:  35-37  is  in  the  same  spirit  of  kind- 
ness to  the  poor. 

=The  Mosaic  Ideai,,  and  Ciiristiax  Slavery. 

The  principles  involved  in  the  Hebrew  economy  and  in  primi- 
tive Christianity  by  no  means,  however,  affected  the  entire  popu- 
lation of  Christendom.  As  in  Buddhist  lands  men  are  found 
who  are  not  actuated  by  the  purest  and  most  uplifting  ideals  of 
their  great  religious  founder,  so  unscrupulous  publicists  in  Chris- 
tian lands,  age  after  age,  have  been  the  instruments  of  bigotry 
and  intolerance,  men  of  strife,  stirring  up  infamous  wars,  and 
who,  in  respect  to  human  slavery,  have  strengthened  the  hands 
of  wickedness.  Between  the  years  of  our  Lord  1680  and  17S0, 
nine  hundred  thousand  slaves  were  borne  from  Africa  to  the  West 
Indies  by  "baptized"  Christians:  and  the  people  of  the  United 
States  maintained  slavery  upon  a  gigantic  scale  until  the  late 
Civil  War.  This  being  so,  it  is  of  little  avail  to  say  that  Chris- 
tian Europe  had  no  slaves  after  the  fourteenth  century,  or  point 
to  the  fact  that  caste  or  slavery  is  still  maintained  among  diverse 
peoples  now  controlled  by  the  great  world  religions.  Although 
it  is  believed  that  at  this  time  no  Christian  country  maintains 
human  slavery,  the  evolution  of  Christianity  has  been  very 
uneven  and  very  slow  in  this  respect,  taking  nearly  nineteen 
hundred  years.  Upon  the  other  hand,  note  the  abolition  of 
slavery  in  his  dominions  by  the  Buddhist  Asoka,  B.  C.  251. 


54  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

purpose  was  shown  by  the  ultimate  ruling?,  that  "Ye  shall 
have  one  manner  of  law  as  well  for  the  stranger  as  for  one 
of  your  own  country."^  This  hospitality  of  rights,  and 
treating  all  men  as  of  the  same  value  before  the  law,  and 
pertinent  humane  precepts  of  the  New  Testament,  were 
referred  to  in  the  legislation  of  Charlemagne  and  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  laws,  enforcing  hospitality  toward  travelers  and 
kindness  to  the  shipwrecked  and  the  unfortunate.- 

Disputes,  under  the  civic  economy  of  the  Hebrews,  appear 
to  have  been  settled  by  arbitration,  and  the  law  was  so 
administered  as  to  bear  an  even  hand  in  guarding  the  inter- 
ests of  the  poor.  Not  only  was  property  protected  from 
theft,  but  the  law  contemplated  the  repression  of  covetous 
desire ;  and  personal  reputation  was  sheltered.  Human  life 
was  guarded  in  its  sanctity;  yet  the  law  was  so  humane 
that  there  were  specified  only  three  death  penalties, — for 
crimes  against  parents,  for  treason,  and  for  murder.  Slay- 
ing a  night  robber  and  killing  in  self-defense  were  jus- 
tifiable.^ 

The  synagogue  v/as  the  most  democratic  of  assemblies,  a 
democracy  that  suggests  if  not  popular  political  franchise, 
at  least  such  common  consent*  in  the  management  of  many 
affairs  as  to  culminate  finally  in  autonomous  rule  among 
Jews  of  the  Dispersion.  The  pronounced  attitude  of  the 
Jew  toward  his  religion  won  for  him  certain  immunities  and 
rights  under  the  Roman  power.  Among  the  privileges  was 
not  only  their  religious  self-government,  but  semi-political 
also.  At  Eome  each  synagogue  was  organized  separately 
with  its  own  officials.     Everywhere  the  Jews  submitted  to 

'Leviticus  24:  22. 

-The  contribution  of  the  Church  to  the  cause  of  human  brother- 
hood in  Great  Britain  is  referred  to  in  Milman's  Latin  Christian- 
ity, Vol.  VIII,  p.  1G7,  of  the  New  York  edition,  1877. 

^Exodus  IS:  21,  22,  24.  Exodus  23:  6,  7.  Leviticus  19:  15. 
Deut.l:17;  16:18,19;  24:9.  Exodus  20:  15,  17.  Exodus20:16. 
Exodus  20:  13. 

*This  thought  coincides  with  such  passages  as  Deut.  1:  13-15. 


PERSONiVL    ACCOUNTABILITY    TO    GOD.  55 

the  judgment  of  their  own  officials  rather  than  the  state 
in  which  they  lived. 

To  sum  up  the  agreement  of  special  students  in  ancient 
Hebrew  economy,  it  may  be  said  that  there  was  free  gov- 
ernment, low  taxation,  and  material  prosperity.^ 

If  the  Hebraic  economy  did  not  contain  the  principle  of 
government  by  representation,  there  was  a  principle  so 
closely  allied  as  to  suggest  it;-  in  usage  the  elders  and 
officers  standing  for  the  people,  in  a  manner  analogous  to 
that  of  the  bishops  in  the  early  councils  of  the  Christian 
Church,  who  were  held  responsible  for  their  people,  W'hom 
they  were  considered  to  represent  in  the  councils.^  In 
respect  to  the  English  speaking  race,  it  has  taken  a  thousand 
years  of  history  to  bring  the  principle  of  representation 
where  it  is  to-day. 

The  rudimentary,  or  loosely  constructed  tribal  confed- 
eration, in  the  early  story  of  Israel,*  was  also  suggestive  to 
later  ages;  the  democratic  churches  of  colonial  America 
looking  to  it  as  a  precedent  for  religious  and  political 
federation. 

The  most  important  contribution  to  the  cause  of  human 
freedom  made  by  the  Hebrew  literature  is  a  thought  which 
all  the  books  have  in  common, — that  of  man's  individual 
responsibility  to  God.  This  tends  to  make  a  man  a  good 
citizen  controlled  by  moral  motives  and  fit  for  self-govern- 
ment. It  is  this,  more  than  anything  else,  that  has  brought 
Christian  nations  to  the  front  in  the  rivalry  for  supremacy. 
The  moral  evolution  of  the  individual  citizen  is  the  basis 

'George  Foote  Moore,  LL.  D.,  of  Harvard  University,  in  Lowell 
Lectures  of  1905. 

"Numbers  11:  IC,  17.  Joshua  9:  18-21;  23:  2;  24:  1.  I  Kings 
8:  1.     I  Chronicles  13:  1,  2. 

'No  such  councils  were  ever  held  by  any  other  great  religion 
except  the  Buddhist, —  in  which,  however,  the  mendicants  com- 
prising the  councils  were  not  considered  as  representatives  of 
the  people. 

'Numbers  1:  2-8.    Joshua  11:  23;     13:  7;     14:5. 


56  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

of  Christian  civilization.^  If  it  is  sometimes  justly  said 
that  individuality  is  developed  by  the  competitive  strug- 
gles of  life,  it  is  also  historically  true  that  the  concep- 
tion of  one's  individual  accountability  to  God  has  had 
the  mightiest  influence  in  Christendom  upon  the  evolution 
of  civic  bodies.  The  earliest  Hebrew  dramas,  their  lyrics, 
their  proverbial  philosophy,  and  the  flaming  messages  of 
their  prophets  uniformly  present  the  Moral  Governor  of 
the  universe  as  never  letting  go  his  grip  on  the  human  con- 
science, kings  and  subjects  alike  held  to  a  sharp  sense  of 
responsibility  to  him.  And  in  the  writings  of  the  founders 
of  the  Christian  era,  it  is  found  that  no  earthly  king  can 
excuse  a  subject  in  disobeying  God. 

This  doctrine,  by  which  each  man  for  himself  is  con- 
fronted with  a  personal  judgment  day,  when  once  grasped 
and  firmly  held,  has  wrought  an  incredible  revolution  in 
portions  of  modern  Christendom.  For  ages  it  liad  been 
said,  ' '  The  king  or  the  Church  will  shield  you ' ' ;  and  when 
it  was  once  known  by  the  commonality  that  they  could  not 
do  it,  this  doctrine  of  individual  loyalty  to  the  Moral  Gov- 
ernor of  the  universe  gave  weight  to  the  battle  axes  by 
which  men  shattered  the  sham  kings,  hollow  hearted  and 
empty  of  royalty.  Men  rose  up  in  great  armies,  demanding 
personal  liberty  to  do  right,  and  protection  in  doing  it. 
"Whatever  crushes  individuality,"  says  Mill,  "is  des- 
potism." "Dei  Gratia"  is  but  a  fiction,  if  royalty  be 
graceless.  This  doctrine  tended  in  every  way  to  open  up 
the  resources  of  individual  manhood.  It  involved  educa- 
tion, suffrage,  the  higher  law,  the  revolution  of  kingdoms, 
and  projected  its  mighty  shadow  of  personal  destiny  into 
the  eternities.  Was  it  not  Luther  who  arose,  claiming  for 
himself  the  "me,"  "my,"  "I,"  "thou"  of  the  Old  and  the 

'The  Japanese  doctrine  of  the  repression  of  individuality  in  its 
relation  to  civic  loyalty  is  not  different  from  what  is  known  as 
patriotism  throughout  Christendom;  the  Christian  doctrine  of 
individual  moral  responsibility  to  God  goes  further,  in  tending 
to  so  develop  man's  moral  nature  that  he  will  be  a  godly  citizen 
as  well  as  a  patriot. 


MORAL    BASIS    OF    SELF-GOVERNED    STATES.  57 

New  Testaments?  He  would  abide  in  a  personal  relation 
to  the  Source  of  Infinite  Life  and  Illumination.  Was  it 
not  said  by  the  Founder  of  the  New  Era  of  hope  for  man- 
kind,— "Whosoever  shall  do  the  will  of  my  Father  which 
is  in  Heaven,  the  same  is  my  brother,  and  sister,  and 
mother";  every  individual  of  the  human  race  privileged 
with  spiritual  kinship  and  equal  honors. 

That  the  earlier  and  later  Hebrew  literature  makes  it 
clear  that  the  foundation  of  a  state  is  religious  is  not  to 
the  present  point:  the  great  world-religions  all  claim  for 
the  state  divine  sanction  and  aid,  and  the  cooperation  of 
all  right-minded  men.  The  point  is  rather  that  it  has  been 
proved  true,  by  sociological  experiments  conducted  during 
a  great  period  of  time,  that  the  little  library  of  books, 
which  Christians  call  sacred,  promotes  the  formation  of 
that  individual  character  which  fits  a  citizen  to  bear  part 
in  any  commonwealth  in  which  government  proceeds  from 
the  common  people  through  their  authorized  representa- 
tives,—  and  that  this  is  the  height  of  human  freedom,  all 
being  in  an  ideal  state  equal  before  the  law,  with  equal 
social  opportunity.  It  was  not  needful  that  the  Jewish 
theocracy  should  succeed,  but  the  lesson  of  it  was  of  value. 
Is  not  that  the  truest  theocracy  in  which  citizens  seek  to 
reduce  to  practice,  through  the  ordinary  rules  of  jurispru- 
dence such  points  of  the  Moral  Law  as  are  pertinent  in 
civics?  Were  it  possible  to  make  the  underlying  princi- 
ples of  the  kingdom  of  love  the  controlling  factors  in  a 
Christian  state  self-governed,  would  not  that  be  the  politi- 
cal and  social  climax  of  the  evolutionary  process  which 
began  in  the  civic  ideas  of  our  Sacred  Books?  Would 
there  not  be  so  formed  for  the  advancement  of  mankind 
certain  great  nationalities  morally  consistent,  through  the 
steady  burning  of  the  divine  fire  of  love  to  man  in  the 
breast  of  every  citizen?^ 

'By  no  means,  however,  is  this  lofty  ideal  realized  in  any  civic 
life  upon  the  globe.  So  imperfectly  are  the  so-called  Christian 
states  governed  by  the  law  of  love,   that  they  have  not  unfre- 


58  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 


VII. 

When  Christianity  came  to  the  Roman  throne  and  when 
the  Roman  pontiff  exercised  temporal  power,  the  juris- 
prudence of  the  fallen  empire  was  modified  by  the  new 
religion. 

The  ancient  statutes  of  the  nations  which  were  conquered 
by  Rome  still  governed  the  subject  peoples  so  far  as  might 
consist  with  Roman  law.  So  it  came  about  that  Roman 
administrators  of  justice  were  obliged  to  study  the  laws 
of  all  nations,  much  to  the  advantage  of  their  sj^stem  of 
jurisprudence,  which  ultimately  represented  an  elevated, 
well-devised,  carefully  compacted  system  of  justice,  or  code 
of  moral  principles,  gathered  from  wide  experience, —  the 
principles  which  they  had  discovered  to  be  just,  whether 
originating  v/ith  Greek  or  barbarian.  It  was  like  a  silent 
deposit,  formed  quietly  during  many  generations;  a  series 
of  rulings,  in  the  daily  adaptation  of  the  principles  of 
justice  to  the  necessities  of  clients.  It  offered  a  solid  basis 
for  modern  jurisprudence  throughout  no  small  part  of  the 
civilized  world.  The  philosophic  apothegms  of  the  stoic 
philosophy  were  embodied  in  the  laws  of  the  nations.  Mar- 
cus Aurelius  Antonius  —  a  man  too  great  to  have  been  an 
emperor  subject  to  the  necessities  of  state-craft  in  that  dark 
age  —  conceived  of  a  polity  in  which  there  is  "the  same  law 
for  all,  a  polity  administered  with  regard  to  equal  rights 
and  equal  freedom  of  speech;  and  the  idea  of  a  kingly 
government  which  respects  most  of  all  the  freedom  of  the 
governed. ' ' 

quently  proved  notorious  truce  breakers  when  self-interest  has 
seemed  to  demand  it;  and  this  is  equally  true  of  republics,  con- 
stitutional kingdoms,  or  despotisms.  Any  reader,  incredulous, 
should  consult  such  works  as  Jackson's  Century  of  Dislionor, 
depicting  the  dealings  of  the  United  States  with  certain  Indian 
tribes  (New  York,  ISSl), —  or  the  records  of  European  policy  for 
a  hundred  and  fifty  years  past,  in  dealing  with  weaker  nations, — 
a  policy  that  has  found  footing  in  the  New  World. 


CHRISTIANIZING    ROMAN    LAW.  69 

"From  the  moment,"  says  Judge  Story/  "when  prin- 
ciples of  decisions  came  to  be  acted  on  in  chancery,  the 
Roman  law  furnished  abundant  material  to  erect  a  super- 
structure at  once  solid,  convenient,  and  lofty,  adapted  to 
human  wants  and  enriched  by  the  aid  of  human  wisdom, 
experience,  and  learning."  "As  if  the  mighty  destinies  of 
Rome  were  not  yet  fulfilled,"  says  Chancellor  D'Agues- 
seau,  "she  reigns  throughout  the  whole  earth  by  her  reason,, 
after  having  ceased  to  reign  by  her  authority."  It  is, 
however,  true  that  the  Roman  law  to  which  these  authori- 
ties allude,  Roman  law  as  it  is  traced  in  the  institutions  and 
customs  of  the  modern  age,  was  so  largely  indebted  to  th^ 
principles  underlying  Hebrew  legislation  and  to  the  ethical 
teaching  of  the  New  Testament,  as  they  appear  in  the  codes 
of  Theodosius  and  of  Justinian,  that  the  strictly  Roman 
sources  are  often  lost  sight  of;  the  distinctive  code  of  the 
empire  being  so  modified  by  the  Christian  equities  of  Jus- 
tinian, that  the  unsparing  reforms  really  sacrificed  in  some 
measure  the  old  to  the  new  —  the  privileges  of  citizens  yield- 
ing to  the  rights  of  man,  the  pride  and  prejudice  of  Rome 
giving  way  to  the  genius  of  humanity  as  it  was  consecrated 
by  the  religion  of  Christ.^ 

When  Charlemagne  appeared,  with  that  greatness  of 
spirit  which  characterized  the  most  ambitious  of  the  Roman 
emperors,  he  sought  a  far  higher  ideal.  His  laws  were  so 
imbued  with  the  principles  of  Christianity  that  historians- 
note  the  incoming  of  a  new  moral  power;  yet  his  ability 
and  character  were  never  matched  by  his  fortune,  since 
he  could  not  easily  bend  to  his  will  the  turbulent  barbarians 
of  the  West.  Christianity  as  a  living  force  in  a  steadily 
advancing  civilization  was  ignominiously  held  back,  gen- 
eraton  after  generation,  by  rude  populations  to  whom  the 
Christian  homilies  —  of  mediaeval  ecclesiastical  legislation — 

^Commentary  on  Equity  Jurisprudence,  Sec.  23. 

"Compare  Legare,  Origin  and  Influence  of  Roman  Legislation. 
Writings,  Vol.  I,  p.  515,  Charleston,  1846.  The  Rise  and  Devel- 
opment of  Christian  Jurisprudence  is  the  topic  of  Ch.  V,  in  Vol. 
I  of  Milman's  Latin  Christianity. 


"60  CIVIC   CONDITIONS. 

appealed  in  vain.  They  heeded  nothing  but  the  red  right 
arm ;  and  after  the  sheathing  of  the  sword  of  Charlemagne, 
the  petty  kings  gave  little  heed  to  practical  Christianity, 
even  if  their  consciences  were  in  priestly  keeping.  The 
■confessors  and  the  ecclesiastical  courtiers  knew,  however, 
the  civil  law  inherited  from  Rome  better  than  others;  in 
fact  they  alone  stood  for  whatever  erudition  there  was  in 
that  age  of  iron.  They  were  compelled  to  know  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  civil  law,  related  as  they  were  to  the  canons 
of  the  Church.  This  made  the  ecclesiastics  indispensable 
to  the  semi-barbarians  who  wore  the  crowns  and  sported 
the  sceptres. 

The  legal  principles  suggested  by  Christianity  obtained 
greater  influence  in  England  than  among  the  peoples  of 
Central  Europe;  British  law,  as  we  have  it  to-day,  being 
less  indebted  to  Rome  than  that  of  any  other  great  nation- 
ality. The  tall  and  fair-haired  people,  stout  of  limb,  who 
had  taken  possession  of  Britain;  the  cattle  thieves,  the 
tamers  of  the  wild  herds;  the  sea  robbers;  the  men  with 
long  knives,  the  Anglo-Saxons, —  ready  to  tackle  the  wolf, 
the  wild  boar,  or  the  Welshman  of  the  West:  these  were 
the  men  whose  dignified  and  stalwart  kings  jolted  about 
the  country  in  ox-carts,  men  who  loved  their  liberty  and 
their  power,  in  whom  dwelt  so  fierce  a  spirit  of  personal 
freedom  that  it  made  them,  it  is  said,  liefer  to  die  than  to 
be  under  the  yoke  of  thraldom ;  these,  our  ancestors  of  bar- 
barian blood,  a  mighty  and  self-willed  people,  bent  on  un- 
bounded loyalty  to  him  alone  who  proved  the  strongest, — 
these  were  the  men  who  yielded  most  pliantly  to  him  who 
appealed  to  their  sense  of  right,  who  dominated  conscience, 
w^ho  stood  as  the  Vicar  of  God.  Down  through  the  ages 
they  pushed  phrase  upon  phrase  of  Christian  edict,  stand- 
ing behind  the  law  with  their  long  knives.  Alfred,  in  the 
ninth  century,  reaffirmed  and  emphasized  the  legal  words 
of  the  monks  of  earlier  generations,  words  that  abide  with 
ns  to-day.  "We  know,"  said  Edward  the  Confessor,  a 
hundred  years  later,  "that  through  God's  grace  a  thrall 


INFLUENCE    ON    ENGLAND.  61 

has  become  a  thane,  and  a  churl  has  become  an  earl,  a 
singer  a  priest,  and  a  scribe  a  bishop :  and  formerly,  as 
God  decreed,  a  fisher  became  a  bishop.     We  have  all  one 
Heavenly  Father,  one  spiritual  mother  which  is  called  the 
Church,  and  therefore  are  we  brothers."     A  much  more 
kingly  speech  than  that  made  by  the  curled  and  powdered 
pagan  who  sat  upon  the  throne  of  the  Franks  seven  cen- 
turies nearer  to  our  own  times,  that  Grand  Monarch  wha 
during  half  a  century  made  good  the  automatic  dictum  — 
"I  am  the  state."     What  book- work  is  more  fascinating' 
than  that  of  running  over  the  earlier  laws  of  England, 
when  legislation  was  being  shaped  by  the  Christian  clergy- 
men, whose  work  for  king  and  country  abides  after  eight 
or  nine  centuries?     We  talk  about  the  evolution  of  the 
modern  era,  but  he  will  never  understand  how  justice  has 
come  into  the  English  world,  and  fair  dealing  and  kindness 
between  neighbors,  purity,  and  self-control,  who  does  not 
detect  the  hoary  heads  of  sermons  upon  the  pages  of  its 
black-letter  law  books.     That  the  Anglo-Saxon  peoples  are 
not  still  barbarians  is  due  to  Christianity,  as  can  be  shown 
in  detail  by  thumbing  the  codes  of  our  ancient  kings.     In 
the  reign  of  Henry  VIII,  one  hundred  and  sixty  chancel- 
lors, and  all  the  masters  of  rolls,  during  the  first  twenty- 
six  years,  were  clergymen;  and  in  the  same  period  there 
were  twelve  clerical  justiciars.^     The  moral  rules  of  Chris- 
tianity as  elaborated    during    many    centuries  were  thus 
transmuted  daily  into  law,  and  principles  of  equity  were 
fixed  by  statute;  the  clerical  decisions  in  casuistry  being 
reduced,  with  each  advancing  year,  to  an  orderly  classifica- 
tion for  governing  a  Christian  realm.     When  the  king  was 
absent,  he  made  some  ecclesiastic  his  viceroy,  not  less  than 
seven  times.     This  was  three  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago. 
So,  little  by  little,  came  to  the  front  among  Christian 
peoples  "the  science  of  jurisprudence,   the  pride  of  the 

"Milman  alludes  to  the  great  influence  of  the  clergy  in  the  time 
of  Henry  VIII,  upon  pp.  134,  137,  Vol.  VIII,  Latin  Christianity. 
New  York,  1877. 


62  CIVIC    CONDITIONS, 

human  intellect;  which,  with  all  its  defects,  redundancies, 
and  errors,  is  the  collected  reason  of  ages, —  combining  the 
principles  of  original  justice  with  the  infinite  variety  of 
human  concerns."^  And  we  have  a  new  order  of  men, 
absolutely  unknown  to  savagery  or  despotism,  a  body  repre- 
senting the  highest  intellectual  fruitage  of  nineteen  Chris- 
tian centuries,  who  are  studious  of  drawing  a  sj^stem  of 
rules  for  the  protection  of  civic  liberty  at  every  point,  in 
forming  a  Christian  state. 

When,  therefore,  we  speak  —  as  we  did  in  the  earlier  part 
of  this  chapter  —  of  the  debt  which  India  and  Hinduism  owe 
to  English  law,  and  the  obligation  of  Buddhist  lands  to 
the  jurisprudence  of  Great  Britain  or  America,  of  the  adop- 
tion by  Japan  of  Occidental  forms  of  government,  and  of 
the  adaptation  of  Western  law  and  usage  to  China,  we  are 
speaking  of  the  widespread  influence  of  certain  well-defined 
ci\ac  ideas  that  have  been  developed  during  a  hundred 
generations  of  Hebrew  and  Christian  history,  and  syste- 
matically wrought  into  the  state-craft  of  modern  Chris- 
tendom. 

VIII. 

It  is  not  historically  true  that  popular  government  as 
known  to  Greece  and  Rome  had  weight  with  the  English 
emigrants  to  America,  or  with  those  who  from  time  to 
time  enlarged  the  limits  of  liberty  in  the  Old  Home. 

Glimpses,  indeed,  of  these  truths  so  precious  had  been 
vouchsafed  to  individuals  in  every  age,  a  primeval  revela- 
tion, a  natural  political  religion  —  which  the  hoary  genera- 
tions scoffed  at  as  impracticable.  All  men,  said  Zeno,  are 
by  nature  equal,  and  virtue  alone  establishes  a  difference 
between  them.  But  the  ancient  Greek  philosophy  as  such 
had  no  word  for  mankind.-  The  outside  world  was  of 
another  kind :  it  was  barbarian.  Athens  had  three  hun- 
dred and  fifty  thousand  slaves,  and  twenty  thousand  free 

^Burke's  Works,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  357.  Boston,  1871. 
=Max  Miiller. 


THE    ENGLISH    BIBLE    AND    POLITICS.  63 

men;  the  government  was  usually  carried  on  by  five  thou- 
sand voters.  There  was  no  general  union  of  the  Grecian 
states,  and  Greece  was  a  political  hell  during  one  hundred 
and  fift}'-  years  through  the  reign  of  the  doctrine  of  state 
sovereignty.  In  Sparta  war  was  the  leading  idea  of  the 
state.  "Lycurgus,"  says  a  French  writer,  "wrote  not  for 
a  people  but  an  army:  it  was  a  barrack  which  he  erected, 
not  a  commonwealth;  and  sacrificing  everything  to  the 
military  spirit,  he  mutilated  human  nature  in  order  to 
crush  it  into  armor." 

The  self-government  upon  the  Tiber  was  that  of  an 
aristocracy:  in  theory  the  Eoman  people  ruled,  but  during 
hundreds  of  years  the  patricians  stood  for  the  people,  and 
they  alone  had  the  right  to  take  part  in  the  management  of 
affairs. 

The  earliest  forms  of  popular  government  in  England 
W'Cre  the  outgrowth  of  anterior  Anglo-Saxon  usages,  and 
the  separation  of  Britain  from  the  continent  was  propitious 
for  unfolding  an  indigenous  political  life.  What  Chris- 
tianity they  had  was  through  churchly  tradition;  when, 
therefore,  the  common  people  received  an  open  Bible 
through  the  printing  press  —  the  translations  of  Wyclif, 
Tyndale,  and  King  James, —  the  people  arose  in  their  might 
to  claim  the  rights  that  belonged  to  them ;  nor  has  history 
a  parallel  to  the  popular  uprising.  What  the  few  had 
known,  the  many  now  caught  at.  As  Bacon  asked  men  to 
look  at  nature  and  read  the  facts,  the  reformers  of  the 
Church  now  collated  the  Scripture  texts  and  announced 
new  social  and  civil  laws :  principles  pertaining  to  political 
and  religious  freedom  were  found  that  had  been  forgotten 
for  ages;  their  full  scope  appearing  dimly  at  first,  then  in 
clear  vision  that  led  the  liberty-loving  Anglo-Saxons  and 
Normans  to  fill  their  isle  with  clamor, — "Let  us  have  more 
of  this,  even  if  the  throne  and  Church  rock  for  it." 
"Here,"  they  said,  "are  the  eternal  principles  of  right 
which  underlie  such  liberties  as  we  have;  our  brother,  the 
king,  is  wrong,  we  must  be  consulted ;  our  brother  at  Rome 


64  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

is  wrong,  the  Church  is  more  than  a  tradition."  And  ere 
long  a  crowd  of  men  violent  and  wrathful  began  to  attack 
the  corruptions  of  the  age,  giving  little  credit  to  the  drift  of 
improved  conditions.  But  if  one  of  those  ranters  in  the 
name  of  God  could  have  stepped  back  a  few  hundred  years, 
and  penetrated  the  dungeons  and  torture  vaults  of  mediae- 
val castles;  could  he  have  encountered  the  wild  beasts  in 
human  guise,  the  savage,  the  lawless,  the  belligerent  and 
barbarian  hosts,  the  barefooted  saints  whose  feet  were  never 
shod  with  the  preparation  of  the  Gospel  of  Peace;  could 
he  have  known  that  system  of  feudal  aggression  and  oppres- 
sion which  defied  law  for  centuries  —  he  would  have  been 
grateful  for  that  Church  which  had  stood  for  the  common 
people,  for  law  and  for  justice,  against  titled  violence.  He 
has  read  that  old  story  amiss,  who  does  not  look  upon  the 
vicious  ecclesiastic  of  the  middles  ages  as  a  paragon  of  pro- 
priety when  compared  with  a  vicious  feudal  lord;  and  he 
has  read  it  all  amiss  who  does  not  discern  in  the  shabby 
treatment  of  humanity  prevalent  in  the  sixteenth  and  sev- 
enteenth centuries  in  England,  a  vast  im.provement  upon 
the  unquestioned  and  unarraigned  tyranny  of  preceding 
centuries  —  an  improvement  wrought  by  that  Chui'ch  which 
regarded  no  caste  limitations.  Nevertheless,  the  move- 
ments of  the  Church  were  too  slow  for  the  age  of  the  print- 
ing press  and  the  revival  of  ancient  wit  and  the  stir  of 
discovery  and  the  adventurous  settlement  of  a  new  hemi- 
sphere, when  the  very  ploughboys  of  England  and  the 
solitary  workmen  over  the  sea  were  permeated  with  the 
thought  of  political  equality,  and  were  mightily  quickened 
in  conscience  through  the  knowledge  of  their  individual 
relation  to  God,  'which  had  come  down  to  them  from  the 
world's  youth  in  the  Sacred  Books  now  first  read  by  the 
Christian  populace.  The  cumulative  force  of  ages  upon 
ages  of  altruistic  instruction  in  weakening  the  hand  of 
tyranny,  the  amazing  effect  of  man's  solitary  communion 
with  his  Maker  without  the  intervention  of  priestly  func- 
tion, and  the  quickening  of  the  seed  of  the  Word,  after  a. 


SELF-GOVERNED     CHURCH    AXD     STATE.  65 

time  formed  a  great  body  of  public  sentiment  well  informed 
iu  the  principles  of  a  larger  civic  freedom.  And  there 
came  a  time  when  Bishop  Burnet  could  safely  affirm  that 
' '  There  is  not  any  one  thing  more  certain  and  more  evident 
than  that  princes  are  made  for  the  people,  and  not  the 
people  for  them;  and  perhaps  there  is  no  nation  under 
Heaven  that  is  more  entirely  possessed  with  this  notion  of 
princes  than  the  English  nation  is  in  this  age ;  so  that  they 
will  soon  be  uneasy  to  a  prince  who  does  not  govern  himself 
by  this  maxim,  and  in  time  grow  very  unkind  to  him." 

The  principle  of  the  association  of  those  having  a  con- 
sciousness of  kind  wrought  powerfully  among  certain  reli- 
gious sects  in  preparing  great  masses  of  Englishmen  for 
self-government.  Whether  or  not  they  were  right,  not  a 
few  of  the  readers  of  the  newly  opened  Bible  made  up  their 
minds  that  much  of  their  ecclesiastical  machinery  was 
unscriptural,  and  as  needless  for  perpetuity  as  the  Jewish 
ceremonial  law:  so  it  soon  came  about  that  local  Puritan 
churches  multiplied  —  small  bodies  of  united  Christians, 
unconformable  to  an  established  state  church, —  and  they 
intensified  the  self-governing  spirit  of  the  English  people 
at  large,  and  improved  upon  the  Anglo-Saxon  heritage  of 
local  freedom  in  affairs.  Many  of  these  small  religious 
assemblies  were  purely  democratic.  In  America,  self-gov- 
ernment in  religion  and  in  local  politics  was  practised  dur- 
ing a  hundred  and  fifty  years  before  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.  A  century  and  a  half  of  actual  self-gov- 
ernment, in  most  things,  a  practice  of  freedom  itself  rather 
than  theorizing  about  it,  at  a  safe  distance  of  three  thou- 
sand miles  from  king  and  parliament, —  it  was  this  which 
led  to  a  republic  when  the  hour  struck.  About  five  miles 
from  the  ocean  crag  where  this  sentence  is  written,  an 
athletic  Puritan  preacher  had  a  ten-acre  lot  upon  a  green 
knoll,  overlooking  the  Chebacco  marshes  and  a  blue  strip 
of  sea,  where  he  thought  over  the  great  problems  of  popular 
liberty.  What  he  wrote  in  vindication  of  the  method  of 
church  government  in  vogue  in  New  England  was  reprinted 
5 


66  CIVIC   CONDITIONS. 

and  widely  circulated  as  a  political  pamphlet  before  the 
Eevolution,  to  prove  that  "Democracy  is  Christ's  govern- 
ment in  Church  and  state."  When  Jefferson  drew  up  his 
Declaration,  he  was  indebted,  according  to  his  own  state- 
ment, to  the  practice  of  self-government  in  a  local  Baptist 
church  near  his  early  home.  And  the  Declaration,  a  year 
before,  at  Mecklenburg,  was  that  of  the  delegates  of  Pres- 
byterian churches.  In  old  England  popular  liberty  owes  a 
great  debt  to  the  non-conformist  churches  in  the  great  cen- 
tres of  population.  No  student  of  Mills'  Essay  upon  Lib- 
erty can  undervalue  the  influence  of  that  free  discussion  of 
affairs  so  vital  to  the  progress  of  society ;  and  there  is  a 
vast  educative  power  through  active  participation  in  a  gov- 
ernment —  no  matter  how  small  —  that  is  carried  on  by  the 
people.  A  curious  testimony  to  the  sociological  value  of 
the  small  self-governing  church  appeared  when  members 
were  elected  to  the  first  Imperial  Parliament  in  Japan  a 
few  years  ago :  one  member  out  of  every  twenty  being  a 
Christian,  when  one  to  five  hundred  was  the  proportion  of 
Christians  to  the  whole  population.  Not  only  had  a  good 
many  prominent  men,  widely  scattered  throughout  the 
empire,  become  Christians,  but  their  participation  in  local 
church  affairs  had  given  them  an  experience  in  public  life 
that  was  of  recognized  value.  Neither  the  Brahman,  the 
Buddhist,  Confucianist,  nor  Moslem  faith  has  anything 
answering  to  the  independent  local  churches  of  Christen- 
dom. We  say  churches,  since  in  a  large  portion  of  Protes- 
tant Christianity  the  Church  is  little  else  than  a  federation 
of  local  churches,  federated  for  convenience.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  exaggerate  the  important  relation  sustained  by  the 
local  church  or  local  religious  assembly  toward  civil  free- 
dom. It  statedly  gathers  the  most  thoughtful  and 
influential  people  in  every  community,  and  accustoms 
them,  generation  after  generation,  to  managing  their  own 
affairs : —  this  is  the  very  groundwork  of  national  self-gov- 
ernment. We  live  in  a  realm  of  ideas;  and,  looked  upon 
wholly  as  a  sociological  experiment,  there  can  be  no  doubt 


CHRISTLVN    LIBERTY    REGULATED    BY    LAW.  67 

of  the  advantage  to  popular  liberty  of  planting  local  Chris- 
tian churches  in  non-Christian  lands.  Far-sighted  states- 
men, with  their  eyes  wide  open,  in  Japan,  in  China,  in 
India,  must  welcome  the  systematic  gathering  of  little  hand- 
fuls  of  good  citizens,  for  instruction  in  the  principles  of 
fraternal  conduct,  the  principles  of  equality  and  justice; 
gatherings  which  will  certainly  diffuse  the  notion  of  a  more 
equitable  conduct  of  affairs;  gatherings  which  will  train 
men  for  the  conscientious  service  of  the  state. 

IX. 

If  it  be  as  true  in  sociology  as  in  nature  that  every  seed 
brings  forth  fruit  after  its  kind,  it  is  to  be  expected  that 
the  \dtal  seeds  of  orderly  government  and  superior  social 
state  planted  in  the  early  ages  of  history  will  bear  ripened 
fruit.  ''Every  nation,"  says  the  Talmud,  "has  its  special 
guardian  angel,  its  horoscopes,  its  ruling  planets  and  stars. 
But  there  is  no  planet  for  Israel.  Israel  shall  look  but  to 
Him.  There  is  no  mediator  between  those  who  are  called 
His  children  and  their  Father  which  is  in  Heaven. "  "  The 
kingdom  is  the  Lord's,"  sang  the  Hebrew  poet;  "He  is  the 
Governor  among  the  nations.  The  Lord  is  our  judge.  The 
Lord  is  our  lawgiver.  Thy  throne,  0  God,  is  for  ever  and 
ever.  Thy  kingdom  is  an  everlasting  kingdom,  and  thy 
dominion  endureth  throughout  all  generations."^  If  the 
original  patriarchal  idea  of  a  spiritual  kingdom,  and  the 
idea  of  Jesus  Christ  of  a  reign  of  love  in  the  earth,  and 
the  early  Church  idea  of  universal  dominion,  are  ever  to 
be  fulfilled,  it  will  be  through  the  self-government  of  citi- 
zens whose  jurisprudence  comprises  the  principles  of  the 
Moral  Law,  as  between  man  and  man.  ' '  If  any  whosoever, ' ' 
thundered  Oliver  Cromwell,  "if  any  whosoever  think  the 
interest  of  Christians  and  the  interest  of  the  nation  two 
different  things,  I  wish  my  soul  may  never  enter  into  their 
secrets."     Christian  law,  "the  guardian  angel  of  a  hundred 

^Psalms  22:  28.     Isaiah  33:  22.     Psalms  45:  6;     145:  10-13. 


68  CIVIC   CONDITIONS. 

generations,"  "the  absolute  justice  of  the  state,  enlight- 
ened by  the  perfect  reason  of  the  state, '  '^  is  little  else  than 
the  attempt  to  reduce  the  Golden  Rule  to  practice.  "It  ia 
the  pleasure  of  the  gods,"  said  Socrates,  "that  what  is  in 
conformity  with  justice  should  also  conform  with  the  law." 
"In  two  minutes,"  said  Governor  Briggs  of  Massachusetts, 
* '  I  can  tell  you  how  to  be  a  good  lawyer  —  as  good  a  lawyer 
as  anybody.  Just  look  over  your  case  carefully,  under- 
stand it,  then  do  what  you  think  is  right :  and  in  nine  cases 
out  of  ten  you  will  have  the  law  on  your  side."-  If  this 
indeed  were  true,  it  would  with  emphasis  be  a  perfect 
Christian  liberty  regulated  by  law.  What  else  than  this  is 
the  highest  test  of  civilization ?  "To  make  a  government, ' ' 
says  Burke,''  "is  one  of  the  easiest  things.  It  is  only  for 
one  to  command  and  for  the  others  to  obey.  To  give  free- 
dom is  likewise  easy.  It  is  only  to  relax  all  control  and 
let  men  do  as  they  will.  But  to  make  a  free  government 
is  the  most  difficult  achievement  of  man's  reason."  It  is 
effected  only  by  great  masses  of  men  who  have  learned 
habitual  self-control  through  the  regulative  force  of  Chris- 
tian principle.  Voluntary  moral  restraint,  the  orderliness 
of  virtue,  is  the  only  safeguard  of  liberty.  Freedom  to  act 
selfishly  tends  to  disorganize  the  state ;  the  stability  of  lib- 
erty is  shaken  by  those  who  take  liberties.  The  rights  of 
man  have  correlate  duties.  The  general  good  restricts  the 
individual ;  voluntary  self-abnegation  is  at  the  basis  of  well- 
ordered  society.  The  democracy  of  Athens  finally  ruined 
the  state,  by  wilful  ruling.  There  must  be  a  government 
of  laws  and  not  of  men. 

"The  object  of  government,"  said  Lord  Bacon,  "is  to 
enforce  among  individuals  the  observance  of  the  moral  law ; 
and  states  are  prosperous  in  proportion  as  this  object  is 
attained."  "Suppose  a  nation  in  some  distant  region," 
wrote  President  John  Adams,  in  his  diary,  "should  take 

^Rufus  Choate's  Works,  Vol.  I,  pp.  430-432.     Boston,  1862. 
''Life,  by  Richards,  p.  68.     Boston,  1866. 
^Vol.  Ill,  pp.  559,  560. 


BIBLE   IDEAS   AND   CIVIC   GENIUS.  69 

the  Bible  for  their  only  law-book,  and  every  member  should 
regulate  his  conduct  by  the  precepts  there  exhibited. 
Every  member  v^^ould  be  obliged  in  conscience  to  temper- 
ance and  frugality  and  industry,  to  justice  and  kindness 
and  charity  towards  his  fellowmen,  and  to  piety,  love  and 
reverence  towards  Almighty  God.  In  this  commonwealth 
no  man  would  impair  his  health  by  gluttony,  drunkenness, 
or  lust :  no  man  would  steal  or  lie,  or  in  any  way  defraud 
his  neighbor,  but  would  live  in  peace  and  good  will  with 
all  men;  no  man  would  blaspheme  his  Maker,  or  profane 
His  worship;  but  a  rational  and  manly  and  sincere  and 
unaffected  piety  and  devotion  would  reign  in  all  hearts." 
''The  general  diffusion  of  the  Bible,"  says  Chancellor 
Kent,  "is  the  most  effectual  way  to  civilize  and  humanize 
mankind;  to  purify  and  exalt  the  general  system  of  public 
morals ;  to  give  efficacy  to  the  just  precepts  of  international 
and  municipal  law;  to  enforce  the  observance  of  prudence, 
temperance,  justice,  and  fortitude,  and  to  improve  all  the 
relations  of  domestic  and  social  life." 

In  all  this  application  of  the  biblical  principles  to  civil 
life,  is  there  not  a  strong  look  as  if  the  Divine  Spirit  were 
aiding  the  progress  of  mankind  in  the  development  of 
national  well  being, —  a  living  and  vivifying  spirit  within 
the  wheels  of  progress?  Certain  it  is  that  the  law  of  the 
kingdom  of  Love  is  never  unfolded  in  its  fullness  unless 
it  is  set  forth  as  a  great  civil  power  in  the  earth,  lifting 
up  those  who  have  fallen  down  and  who  are  under  the 
feet  of  oppression. 

If  it  were  to  be  said  that  the  distance  of  America  from 
Europe  is  sufficient  to  explain  the  success  of  the  experiment 
of  self-government  in  the  United  States,  rather  than  the 
influence  of  an  open  Bible  upon  the  leaders  of  republican 
thought,  it  w'ould  be  needful  to  show  why  Mexico  and  South 
American  republics  have  not  prospered  equally  well.  There 
is  a  curious  story  of  the  clergy  who  followed  Cortez  to  Mex- 
ico. They  baptized  from  ten  to  twenty  thousand  natives 
a  day  until  within  a  short  time  they  "converted"  four 


70  CIVIC    CONDITIONS. 

millions  of  them :  they  then  left  them  with  a  mere  modicum 
of  the  thoroughgoing  instruction  that  Charlemagne  gave 
to  his  vanquished  Germans  after  their  enforced  baptism. 
Ultimately  the  common  people  of  Germany  opened  the 
Bible  and  fitted  themselves  for  Christian  liberty,  but  the 
Book  gained  no  foothold  in  Mexico.  Does  not  social 
efficiency  rest  upon  certain  qualities  of  character?  The 
Teutonic  people  have  wrought  out  those  characteristics 
through  attention  to  the  moral  ideas  found  in  the  sacred 
literature  of  Christianity.  And  as  to  their  social  evolution 
a  vast  popular  energy  has  been  developed  in  the  lines  of 
Teutonic  stock.  Political  emancipation,  social  liberty,  the 
opening  up  of  intellectual  forces,  freedom  of  opportunity 
for  unfolding  special  powers,  and  such  goods  as  good 
homes, —  all  these  are  closely  connected  with  casting  the 
germinal  ideas  of  the  kingdom  of  Love  into  good  soil;  so 
that  when  we  speak  about  races  and  religions,  we  inquire 
about  the  building  up  of  personal  character  through  per- 
sonal relation  to  the  highest  themes  of  our  faith.  In  say- 
ing, therefore,  that  the  Teutonic  stock  increased  by  one 
hundred  and  six  millions  in  ninety  recent  years,  as  against 
an  increase  of  thirty-one  millions  of  the  Latin  races  in  the 
same  years,  we  merely  recognize  the  fact  that  genius  for 
successful  colonization  is  closely  connected  with  genius  for 
self-government,  and  self-government  is  best  conducted  in. 
a  state  by  citizens  whose  individual  characters  are  vol- 
untarily formed  through  biblical  ideas  —  such  as  moral 
uprightness,  altruistic  energy,  intelligent  and  determined 
devotion  to  duty, —  qualities  that  cement  associates  when 
adjusting  themselves  to  new  conditions  in  new  realms  — ■ 
the  qualities  which  constitute  an  inherently  expansive  and 
advancing  people. 

The  power  of  the  Germanic  peoples  to  carry  about  with 
them  local  self-government  all  over  the  world  —  ready  at 
any  time  to  set  up  a  nation, —  is,  at  least  in  respect  to  the 
English  speaking  stock,  through  the  habit  of  ages  upon  ages 
of  self-government ;  and  the  failure  of  colonization  schemes 


BIBLE    IDEAS    AND     CIVIC    GENIUS.  71 

of  races  differently  trained  is  often  by  their  inability  to 
suddenly  adopt  that  which  has  become  a  second  nature 
through  the  expansion  of  England. 

As  between  all  races  and  all  religions,  while  we  may  not 
forecast  the  future,  it  is  true  that  Brahmans,  Buddhists, 
Confucianists  and  Mohammedans  have  yet  to  establish  great 
national  powers  in  which  the  entire  body  of  the  people 
actively  participates  in  self-government,  powers  which  have 
the  faculty  of  self-propagation  in  all  parts  of  the  earth, 
and  powers  which  so  federate  all  parts  as  to  present  to  the 
world  a  united  front  of  empire.^ 

'The  ultimate  unifying  effect  of  English  law  upon  subject  races 
is  one  of  incalculable  influence  for  civic  good;  preparing  alien 
peoples  for  a  more  hearty  union  in  one  body,  through  bestowing 
a  legacy  of  elaborately  outworked  principles  upon  distant  parts 
of  the  globe  promoting  substantial  justice,  making  safe  the 
homes  of  the  people  and  protecting  individual  rights.  There  is 
in  this  a  prophecy  relating  to  the  civic  future  of  mankind. 


CHAPTER  III:  CONTRASTS  IN  HOME  BUILDING. 

''Heredity,"  it  is  remarked  by  Ribot,  "is  but  one  form 
of  that  ultimate  law,  which,  by  physicists,  is  called  the  con- 
servation of  energy."^  "Each  generation,"  says  Galton, 
"has  enormous  power  over  the  natural  gifts  of  those  that 
follow."  Studies  in  heredity  show,  not  that  nature  main- 
tains an  average  by  always  crossing  characteristics  between 
parents  and  children,  but  frequently  the  daughters  resemble 
their  father,  and  sons  their  mother;  so  often,  indeed,  as  to 
mothers  and  sons,  that  a  racial  degradation  of  women 
results  in  breeding  an  inferior  grade  of  men.  The  influ- 
ence of  parental  stock  and  parental  training  appears  in  a 
handful  of  American  college  catalogues;  until  some  recent 
date,  the  alumni,  for  the  most  part,  have  been  comprised 
wdthin  a  thousand  patronymics.  In  some  of  these  homes 
there  have  been  a  superior  grade  of  women,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  Edwards  stock  and  other  eminent  houses  of  early 
Northampton  on  the  Connecticut. 

Out  of  fourteen  hundred  descendants  of  Jonathan 
Edwards  and  his  wife,  Sarah  Pierrepont,  during  the 
eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries,  there  were  —  to  speak 
approximately  —  five  score  lawyers,  of  whom  thirty  became 
judges;  five  score  clergymen  or  professors  of  theology;  five 
score  professors  in  colleges,  of  whom  thirteen  became  col- 
lege presidents ;  six  score  and  fifteen  books  were  written  by 
authors  within  this  family  stock;  five  score  persons  held 
public  offices,  of  whom  six  were  governors  of  states  or 
United  States  senators ;  three  score  were  physicians ;  eighteen 
were  editors;  and  seventy-five  were  men  in  the  army  or 
navy;  of  not  far  from  seven  hundred  men  of  this  stock, 
Yale  College  alone  enrolled  a  hundred  and  twenty  grad- 
uates. 

About  seventeen  years  after  this  Edwards  roll  began, 

^Heredity,  p.  391.    London,  1875. 


THE    JUKES-EDWARDS    STORY.  73 

there  began,  in  New  York  state,  the  record  of  a  family 
known  as  the  Jukes.  Out  of  twelve  hundred  descendants 
in  one  line  the  detailed  story  of  seven  hundred  is  known : — 
only  twenty  learned  a  trade,  of  whom  ten  learned  it  in 
prison;  seven  were  murderers;  sixty,  profei«ional  thieves; 
one  hundred  and  thirty  were  criminals ;  three  hundred  and 
ten  were  paupers;  four  hundred  and  forty  were  viciously 
diseased.  The  thieving,  trials,  and  prison  life  of  this  fam- 
ily stock,  the  maintaining  of  their  women  of  evil  habits, 
the  cost  of  disease,  and  loss  of  wages  amounted  in  a  period 
of  seventy-five  years,  in  which  statistics  were  available,  to 
$1,308,000.1 

Such  facts  accord  with  the  principle  of  the  conservation 
of  energy  by  heredity  so  well  known  in  the  breeding  of 
domestic  animals,  which  from  a  scientific  point  of  view  is 
so  important  that  in  advanced  commonwealths  the  trans- 
mission of  the  most  profitable  traits  has  been  favored  by 
legislation.  Like  produces  like.  To  breed  from  the  best 
is  the  rule.  Good  blood  is  paramount,  of  the  strain  that 
it  is  desired  to  perpetuate.- 

It  is  the  purpose  of  this  chapter  to  inquire  as  to  the 
status  of  women  in  homes  dominated  by  Brahmans,  Bud- 
dhists, Confucianists,  Mohammedans,  and  Christians,  to  see 
how  racial  stock  has  been  affected  by  the  laws  of  heredity, 
in  an  experiment  conducted  during  a  period  varying  from 
forty  to  more  than  a  hundred  generations. 

*A.  E.  Winship's  Jukes-Edwards,  a  Study  in  Education  and 
Heredity,  Harrisburg,  1900;  and  R.  L.  Dugdale's  The  Jukes,  a 
Study  in  Crime,  Pauperism,  Disease  and  Heredity,  New  York, 
1877. 

^Consult:  "The  Horse:  How  to  Breed,  etc.,"  by  William  Day, 
pp.  170-186.  London,  1888.  "Cattle  and  Cattle  Breeders,"  by 
McCombre,  pp.  151,  152.  Blackwood,  1867.  "Animals  and  Plants 
under  Domestication,"  Darwin.  Vol.  II,  p.  194-205.  London. 
1868.  Darwin's  "Origin  of  Species."  Vol.  I,  p.  36,  5th  edition. 
London,  1888.  It  is  here  stated  that  in  Saxony  the  sheep  are, 
at  three  periods  of  growth,  placed  on  a  table  and  studied,  and 
each  time  they  are  so  marked  and  so  classed,  that  the  very  best 
may  be  ultimately  selected  for  breeding. 


74  HINDU   HOMES. 


I. 

If  child  marriage  has  been  the  universal  Hindu  custom 
since  the  Mohammedan  conquest,  and  if  it  was  common 
before  that,  should  there  not  be  by  the  laws  of  heredity  an 
inferior  race  springing  from  parents  whose  higher  powers 
of  manhood  and  womanhood  are  undeveloped  ?  If  we  may 
properly  speak  of  any  great  people,  with  many  highly  civil- 
ized traits,  as  still  semi-pristine  or  little  above  the  domestic 
animals  in  the  transmission  of  their  kind,  we  must  say  it  in 
regard  to  a  race  in  which  the  oldest  son  for  ages  has  been 
born  of  parents  who  are  mere  children.  Girls  in  India, 
says  Professor  M.  Monier-Williams,  are  betrothed  at  three 
or  four,  married  at  eight  or  nine  to  boys  of  whom  they  know 
nothing,  and  very  often  become  mothers  at  twelve  or  thir- 
teen. Eighty  generations  ago,  the  Institutes  of  Manu 
named  eight  at  the  earliest  age  and  twelve  at  the  latest  for 
a  girl's  marriage.  It  is  now  twelve  at  the  youngest  under 
British  rule.  Among  more  than  two  hundred  and  ninety 
millions  of  people  the  girls  have  no  schooling,  but  are  early 
initiated  into  certain  religious  ceremonies  designed  to  pro- 
cure to  themselves  husbands.^  An  unwholesome  atmosphere 
for  the  beginnings  of  life  —  feebleness  of  body,  weakmind- 
edness,  parental  ignorance, —  are  incident  to  child  marriage 
in  India.^  The  little  maiden  who  said, — ''You  make  my 
heart  laugh," — did  not  live  in  India.  Rukhmabai,  who 
rebelled  against  her  baby  betrothal  to  a  drunkard,  who 
bought  from  the  man  that  freedom  which  the  law  could 
not  give  her,  states  that  laughing  and  running  are  not  allow- 
able to  girls  after  they  are  nine  years  old.  She  never  ran 
until  she  went  to  England.  Even  if  customs  differ  in  the 
various  provinces,  or  between  town  and  country,  there  are 

^W.  J.  Wilkins'  Modern  Hinduism,  pp.  340,  341.     London,  1887. 

'Compare  Sir  M.  Monier-Williams'  statement  in  the  Contem- 
porary Review,  XXXIII,  pp.  268,  269.  Few  girls  reach  full  physi- 
cal development  before  they  assume  the  function  of  child-bear- 
ing.— J.  P.  Jones'  India's  ProNem,  p.  154;  vide,  also,  pp.  25,  26. 


HINDU   "WOMEN. 


7& 


extended  portions  of  India  where  the  girls  take  up  life's- 
sorrows  too  early,  and  it  makes  their  eyes  heavy. 

Looked  at  from  the  standpoint  of  heredity,  as  to  select- 
ing the  best  breeding  stock  for  the  sake  of  an  improved 
grade  of  men,  the  matter  was  made  worse  very  early  in 
Brahmanic  history  by  permanently  degrading  motherhood 
in  India,  bringing  it  as  nearly  as  possible  to  the  condition 
of  motherhood  in  domestic  animals.  Both  by  ancient  pre- 
cept and  the  common  custom  of  the  centuries,  women  are 
classified  with  cows,  mares,  female  camels,  buffaloes,  and 
goats.  The  woman,  however,  is  differentiated  from  inferior 
animals  in  this,  that  through  her  husband  she  may  find 
spiritual  salvation.^  In  the  Hindu  system,  the  husband  as. 
related  to  the  wife  stand  in  the  place  of  deity.  A  popular 
statement  of  this  dogma  has  been  made  by  an  educated 
Hindu  woman  in  the  Calcutta  Review  r 

"The  husband  is  the  wife's  religion,  the  wife's  sole  busi- 
ness, the  wife's  all  in  all.  The  wife  should  meditate  on  her 
husband  as  Brahma.  For  her,  all  privilege  should  be  con- 
centrated on  her  husband's  foot.  The  command  of  a  hus- 
band is  as  obligatory  as  a  precept  of  the  Vedas.  To  a 
chaste  wife  her  husband  is  her  god.  When  the  husband  is 
pleased  Brahma  is  pleased.  The  merit  of  waiting  on  the 
feet  of  her  husband  is  equivalent  to  the  merit  of  perform- 
ing all  the  pilgrimages  in  the  world.  To  obey  the  husband 
is  to  obey  the  Vedas.  To  worship  the  husband  is  to  wor- 
ship the  gods.  The  husband  is  the  wife's  spiritual  guide^ 
her  honor,  the  giver  of  her  happiness,  the  bestower  of  for- 
tune, righteousness,  and  Heaven ;  her  deliverer  from  sorrow 
and  from  sin."  All  this  is  based  upon  Book  V.,  Section 
154,  of  the  Institutes  of  Manu.  "Though  inobservant  of 
approved  usages,  or  enamored  of  another  woman,  or  des- 
titute of  good  qualities,  yet  a  husband  must  constantly  be 

'It  is  a  singular  coincidence,  showing  the  tendency  of  the 
human  mind  to  revert  to  ancient  types,  that  Mormonism  in  Utah, 
gives  prominence  to  the  same  tenet. 

'XL\X,  p.  39. 


76  HINDU   HOMES. 

reverenced  as  a  god  by  a  virtuous  wife."  No  sacrifice  is 
allowed  to  women  apart  from  their  husbands,  no  religious 
rite,  no  fasting."^  "By  a  girl,  or  by  a  young  woman,  or 
l)y  a  woman  advanced  in  years,  nothing  must  be  done,  even 
in  her  own  dwelling  place,  according  to  her  mere  pleasure. 
In  childhood  must  a  female  be  dependent  on  her  father,  in 
youth  on  her  husband;  her  lord  being  dead,  on  her  sons. 
A  woman  must  never  seek  independence."-  "If,"  it  is 
•said  in  the  laws  of  Manu,  "a  man  goes  on  a  journey,  his 
wife  shall  not  divert  herself  in  play,  nor  shall  she  see  any 
public  show,  nor  shall  laugh,  nor  shall  dress  herself  in 
jewels  and  fine  clothes,  nor  shall  see  dancing,  nor  hear 
music,  nor  shall  sit  in  the  window,  nor  shall  ride  out,  nor 
shall  behold  anything  choice  or  vain;  but  shall  fasten  well 
the  house  door  and  remain  private;  and  shall  not  eat  any 
dainty  victuals, ,  and  shall  not  blacken  her  eyes  with  eye- 
powder,  and  shall  not  view  her  face  in  a  mirror;  she  shall 
never  exercise  herself  in  any  such  agreeable  employment 
during  the  absence  of  her  husband."  Who  does  not  see 
that  this  suppression  of  Hindu  women  during  four  score 
generations  has  transmitted  —  among  other  hereditary 
traits  —  a  certain  submission  and  docility  in  yielding  to 
fate,  that  has  made  the  men,  throughout  the  hundreds  of 
xnillions  of  India,  an  easy  conquest  to  Moslem  warriors  or 
to  a  band  of  adventurers  from  Christendom.     "A  man, 

^Compare  Professor  E.  W.  Hopkins'  citations  from  the  Mahab- 
liarata  upon  man  worship,  in  his  work  upon  the  "Position  of  the 
Ruling  Caste  in  Ancient  India"  (Am.  Oriental  Soc.  Journal,  Vol. 
XIII,  pp.  364,  365): — "It  is  the  incarnate  husband  that  makes  the 
wife  glorious.  .  .  .  The  husband  is  the  woman's  god.  Here 
^nd  hereafter  he  is  the  woman's  sole  hope  and  possession."  "She 
has  no  divinity  equal  to  a  husband;  he  is  her  highest  divinity. 
"When  the  husband  is  pleased,  the  divinities  are  pleased."  "A 
woman  has  no  sacrificial  rite,  .  .  .  the  wife  obtains  Heaven 
solely  by  obedience  to  her  husband."  .  .  .  "Her  husband  is  her 
refuge  and  her  god."  "The  wife  must  do  as  her  husband  bids, 
whether  right  or  wrong." — M.  I.,  104.30;  233.26;  III,  68.19; 
234.21;   XII,  145.4;    148.7  ff. 

"Dharma  Sastra,  V,  pp.  55,  156,  162,  163. 


PATRIARCHAL.  SYSTEM. 


77 


both  day  and  night,  must  keep  his  wife  so  much  in  subjec- 
tion that  she  by  no  means  be  mistress  of  her  own  actions" : 
this  was  said  by  the  Institutes  four  score  generations  since,, 
and  the  sons  of  these  suppressed  and  docile,  if  not  servile, 
mothers  are  to-day  reaping  the  fruit  of  more  than  twenty- 
seven  hundred  years  of  heredity. 

Looked  at  from  the  point  of  Occidental  sociology,  does 
not  the  continuance  of  the  patriarchal  system  in  the  homes 
of  India  indicate  the  projection  into  modern  life  of  one  of 
the  earliest  historic  races  unquickened  by  a  progressive 
society.^  Every  Hindu  household  is  managed  by  the  patri- 
archal head.  The  wives  cook  for  the  family,  and  as  ser- 
vants wait  upon  their  husbands. 

The  household  relation  of  wife  to  husband  is  that  of  ser- 
vant, rather  than  a  social  companion.  In  accord  with  the 
theory  that  the  husband  is  a  god  to  the  wife,  she  never  pro- 
nounces his  name.  There  is  a  sharp  separation  between 
them.  While  he  partakes  of  the  food  she  has  prepared,  the 
wife  retires  to  a  corner,  turns  her  face  to  the  wall,  and  sits 
in  silence.  If  she  were  to  sit  and  eat  with  her  husband,  it 
would  be  regarded  by  him  as  an  insult.-  Curiously  enough, 
this  was  one  of  the  conditions  in  domestic  life  in  Tahiti 
prior  to  1815.  "The  Institutes  of  Oro  and  Tane,"  says 
Ellis,  "inexorably  required,  not  only  that  the  wife  should 
not  eat  those  kinds  of  food  of  which  the  husband  partook, 
but  that  she  should  not  eat  in  the  same  place,  nor  prepare 
her  food  at  the  same  fire.  This  restriction  applied  not  only 
to  the  wife  with  regard  to  her  husband,  but  to  all  individ- 

*If  this  usage,  so  ancient,  pertaining  to  the  childhood  of  great 
peoples  —  as  of  the  Hebrews  —  cannot  be  traced  to  any  sentiment 
properly  designated  as  religious,  Brahmanical  or  Confucian,  it  is 
certainly  true,  as  it  will  appear,  that  religious  principles  per- 
taining to  later  Judaism  and  the  New  Testament  Church  hindered 
the  custom  from  hampering  Christian  home  life. 

The  evils  inherent  in  the  Hindu  Patriarchal  Family  system  are 
alluded  to  in  Jones'  India's  Problem,  pp.  24,  25. 

-Communication  from  the  Rev.  S.  Paul,  honorary  chaplain  to 
the  bishop  of  Madras,  Sachiapuram,  North  Tinnevelly. 


78 


HINDU   HOMES. 


nals  of  the  female  sex,  from  their  birth  to  the  day  of  their 
death.  .  .  .  The  men,  especially  those  who  occasionally 
attended  on  the  services  of  idol  worship  in  the  temple,  were 
•considered  sacred;  while  the  female  sex,  altogether,  was 
considered  common.  .  .  .  The  fire  at  which  man's  food 
was  cooked  was  also  sacred.  .  .  .  The  inferior  food  for 
wives  and  daughters  was  cooked  at  separate  fires,  deposited 
in  distinct  baskets,  and  eaten  in  lonely  solitude  in  little  huts 
erected  for  the  purpose."^  The  same  doctrine  of  the 
sacredness  of  man,  so  sacred  that  a  woman  might  not  eat 
with  her  husband,  prevailed  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands  in 
pagan  days.^  So  intimately  is  modern  Hinduism  allied  to 
man  barbaric,  or  man  primeval,  in  domestic  affiliations,  that 
we  can  but  speak  of  India  as  semi-pristine  in  its  civilization, 
in  the  same  way  in  which  we  may  speak  of  a  semi-Christian 
civilization  that  is  guilty  of  most  un-Christian  social  enor- 
mities. 

"The  sanctity  of  the  cow  and  the  depravity  of  woman" 
is  the  one  point  on  which  all  the  sects  of  Hinduism  agree. 
Women  are  —  by  religious  precept  and  custom  —  looked 
upon  as  having  no  other  than  a  servile  function,  or  that  of 
keeping  the  race  alive.  To  this  end,  in  city  life,  in  wealthy 
homes,  they  are  kept  in  seclusion  f  in  the  patriarchal  house- 
hold, including  the  sons'  wives,  perhaps  twelve  or  fifteen 
women  in  one  Zenana.*  Nor  are  the  women's  apartments 
those  that  are  well  lighted  with  verandas  overlooking  the 
street :  those  are  occupied  by  the  gentlemen.  The  women 
are  left,  rather,  to  look  into  the  quadrangle  at  the  cows  and 
the  goats  or  at  a  vacant  wall,  where  they  busy  themselves 
in  mental  vacuity.  Of  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  mil- 
lions of  women  and  girls  in  India,  only  one  in  eight  hvindred 
can  read.     How  can  such  women  —  generation  after  gen- 

^Polynesian  Researches,  I,  pp.  221,  222.     London,  1S29. 

-Jarves'  History  of  the  Sandwich  Islands,  p.  94.     Boston,  1843. 

*Jones,  p.  151,  says  that  in  Southern  India  this  seclusion  is 
observed  only  among  the  most  aristocratic. 

^Three  or  four  wives  are  legally  permitted  to  the  highest  caste, 
but  it  is  believed  that  the  ordinary  number  does  not  exceed  two. 


CONDITION    CF    T^-IDOWS.  79 

eration  for  more  than  twenty-five  hundred  years  —  breed  an 
intelligent,  broad-minded,  and  high-spirited  stock?  Is  it 
not  a  well-known  fact  that  tte  illiterate  and  superstitious, 
so  often  herding  in  the  great  cities  of  Christendom,  are  con- 
stantly propagating  a  progeny  that  recalls  the  frogs  of 
Balboa  —  each  half  emerged,  frog  above  and  mud  below? 
Are  there  not  some  three  hundred  millions  of  people  in 
Hindustan,  who  are  in  character  the  very  opposite  of  a 
high-spirited  people  with  all  round  capacity  for  the  world's 
work?  Heredity  explains  it.  They  have  been  born  of 
women  whose  independent  personality  has  been  suppressed 
for  thousands  of  years ;  and  each  generation  of  descent  has 
accentuated  the  character  of  the  sons  —  the  fathers  of  the 
next  generation.  It  is  like  tree  like  fruit,  by  the  inevitable 
laws  of  nature. 

There  are  two  things  further  which  may  be  alluded  to  as 
deeply  affecting  womanhood,  in  which  Hinduism  differs 
from  other  great  religions :  one  the  condition  of  widows,  the 
other  the  dedication  of  daughters  to  lives  of  temple  pros- 
titution. 

It  was  written  in  the  Institutes  of  Manu,  that  "It  is 
proper  for  a  woman  after  her  husband 's  death  to  burn  her- 
self in  the  fire  with  his  corpse."  This  was  done  to  no  small 
extent  in  India  during  three  thousand  years.  Before  it 
was  forbidden  by  the  British  government  in  1829,  there 
were  thought  to  be  about  three  thousand  widows  a  year  so 
burned  alive.  In  Bengal  alone,  by  official  figures,  there 
were  seven  thousand,  one  hundred  and  fifty-four  in  the 
years  1815-1826.  In  1803,  four  hundred  thirty-eight  were 
burned  within  thirty  miles  of  Calcutta.^     This  practice  was 

'Ward's  Hindoos,  Vol.  II,  p.  563.     Serampore,  1816. 

Maine's  Early  Institutions,  p.  335  (London,  1875),  makes  the 
statement  that  they  were  childless  widows  of  the  wealthier 
classes,  who  had  life-time  property  rights,  which  were  extin- 
guished by  the  suttee  fires. 

Note  by  Professor  E.  Washburn  Hopkins. — The  statement 
made  by  Max  Miiller  (Chips,  IV,  35-39.  London,  1895),  that  the 
Brahmans  falsified  the  Vedic  text  to  support  the  custom,  has 


80  HINDU   HOMES. 

in  accord  with  the  Hindu  theory  of  the  total  suppression 
oi'  the  wife's  personality  in  the  interest  of  her  husband.  It 
illustrates  the  theory  that  the  Hindus  are  not  only  of  primi- 
tive racial  type,  but  in  some  particulars  arrested  in  their 
development.  Among  the  early  barbarians  of  Europe  a 
like  custom  was  known.  Anglo-Saxon  widows  sometimes 
put  themselves  to  death  to  accompany  their  husbands  to 
realms  unknown.^  Wife  slaying,  for  a  similar  purpose,  has 
been  practiced  to  some  extent  by  primitive  races  or  tribes: 
as,  for  example,  in  the  African  kingdom  of  Dahomy.* 
Since  the  abolition  of  the  suttee  in  India,  much  has  been 
written  by  philanthropic  laborers  in  the  country  about  the 
hard  and  even  harsh  condition  of  living  widows  who  are 
not  allowed  to  remarry;  it  being  the  theory  of  Hinduism 
that  the  sins  of  the  wife  in  some  former  stage  of  existence 
are  the  ultimate  cause  of  her  husband's  death.^  This,  in 
multitudes  of  patriarchal  households,  subjects  the  widows 
to  domestic  abuse  and  unrequited  drudgery.  They  are  not, 
however,  treated  with  equal  harshness  in  all  parts  of  India. 
The  pathetic  point  about  it,  sociologically  considered,  is 
that  so  many  are  of  tender  age,  fit  only  for  nursery  life  in 

been  shown  to  be  erroneous.  It  does  not  appear  that  suttee  was 
inculcated  in  the  Vedic  hymns,  but  was  adopted  at  very  early 
date,  originally  in  royal  families,  and  thence  extended  to  other 
respectable  houses.  The  rules  in  Manu  for  the  conduct  of  vir- 
tuous widows  show  that  it  was  still  optional  for  them  to  die 
or  live.  The  older  epic  poetry  implies  the  widow's  right  to  sur- 
vive her  husband. 

^Allen's  Anglo-Saxon  Britain,  p.  79. 

^So  closely  is  the  immolation  of  widows  in  Hindustan  akin  to 
barbarism,  that  Dr.  John  Geddies,  of  Nova  Scotia,  a  pastor  not 
long  since  at  Aneityum,  upon  his  arrival,  found  every  married 
woman  wearing  a  stout  cord  about  her  neck,  by  which  she  could 
be  conveniently  strangled  upon  the  death  of  her  husband. — 
Mission  Stories  of  Many  Lands,  p.  371,  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  Boston, 
1S85. 

^The  parents  of  the  boy  sincerely  believe  that  it  is  her  evil 
star  which  has  killed  him;  and  henceforth  she  is  regarded  as  an 
accursed  person,  hated  for  what  has  happened  to  her  husband, 
and  a  creature  to  be  shunned. —  Jones,  p.  155. 


SANCTION  OF  INFAMY. 


81 


good  homes.  A  recent  census  reported  twenty-three  mil- 
lions of  widows,  of  whom  more  than  ten  thousand  were 
under  four  years  old ;  and  more  than  six  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand,  under  nine.  It  is  a  domestic  peculiarity  in  India 
that  no  man,  whose  wife  dies,  is  subjected  to  hardship  by 
her  kinsfolk;  nor  does  the  Hindu  theology  intimate  that 
his  sins,  here  or  heretofore,  have  been  the  cause  of  her 
death.  In  no  other  part  of  the  world  is  there  any  great 
people,  dominated  by  one  religion,  in  which  widows  —  on 
account  of  their  own  sins  in  a  previous  state  of  existence  — 
are  held  responsible  by  domestic  circles  for  the  death  of 
their  husbands,  and  subjected  therefor  to  venomed  tongues, 
ignominy  and  hard  service:  and  so  vast  is  the  population 
of  Hindustan  that,  to  some  extent,  this  inhumanity  —  based 
upon  their  religion  —  affects  one  widow  out  of  every  five 
upon  the  globe. 

The  other  thing  affecting  womanhood,  in  which  Hinduism 
differs  from  other  great  religions,  is  that  custom,  so  con- 
ducive to  national  domestic  degradation,  the  temple  life- 
service  of  girls  for  priestly  prostitution ;  a  custom  figuring 
largely  enough  in  Hinduism  to  give  the  weight  of  religious 
sanction  to  impurity  under  the  name  of  marriage  to  a  deity. 
This  reacts  on  the  religious  system  itself,  giving  to  non- 
Hindus  the  impression  that  it  is  —  as  a  distinguished  Amer- 
ican traveler  has  said, — "Vile,  filthy,  obscene,  and  debas- 
ing."    This  stamp  of  divine  approval  of  harlot  lives  and 
the  not  infrequent  Hindu  maintenance  of  plural  wives  and 
concubines,  give  such  tone  to  home  talk  and  conversation,^ 
as  to  introduce  to  the  youth  of  India  the  most  infamous 
ideals,  as  if  the  land  were  indeed  peopled  by  a  semi-primi- 
tive race  with  not  a  few  of  the  ancient  instincts  of  a  bar- 
baric stock, —  the  relation  between  the  sexes  in  Hindustan 
recalling  at  many  points  the  records  of  anthropologists  in 
regard  to  customs  of  the  tribes  or  races  nearest  man  pri- 
meval.    But  it  should  be  said,  in  justice  to  the  Hindus, 
that  if  there  are  proportionately  twelve  times  as  many 

^The  Rev.  S.  Paul. 
6 


82  HINDU  HOMES. 

women  of  ill  fame  in  Calcutta  as  in  London^  they  are  in 
part  maintained  by  pseudo-Christians. 

So  far  as  the  devotement  of  child  life  to  religious  infamy 
is  concerned,  it  is,  on  the  part  of  parents,  through  a  desire 
to  gain  religious  merit  by  so  disposing  of  undesirable  daugh- 
ters ;  it  being  more  respectable  than  infanticide,  which,  as  a 
not  infrequent  custom,  is  but  the  logical  outcome  of  woman's 
hard  lot  in  India. 

"Infanticide,"  says  Tylor,-  "comes  from  hardness  of 
life  rather  than  from  hardness  of  heart."  To  the  poor  in 
India,  it  is  difficult  to  make  up  marriage  dowries  for  their 
daughters,  and  girls  can  neither  aid  the  father's  work  nor 
perform  his  funeral  rites;  these  considerations,  with  the 
general  undervaluation  of  womanhood,  make  the  advent  of 
female  babes  a  matter  of  sorrow  and  taunting  in  a  patri- 
archal family.^  "There  is,"  says  the  proverb,  "a  place 
to  stow  everything  away,  but  no  place  to  keep  a  girl  in." 
Early  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Ward,  who  was  associated 
with  Carey,  caused  systematic  inquiry  to  be  made  in  regard 
to  the  destruction  of  child  life,  and  it  was  found  that  the 
population  of  the  province  of  Bengal  was  diminished  a 
hundred  thousand  a  year  by  this  unnatural  crime.  And, 
to-day,  the  official  publications  of  India  recognize  the  fact 
that  the  systematic  reduction  of  the  number  of  girls  is 
common  now,  in  spite  of  the  efforts  of  the  government  to 
tinder  it.  It  is  a  striking  comment  upon  the  hoary  cen- 
turies of  Brahmanical  religious  rule  in  India,  that  the 
attempt  to  break  up  this  infamy  was  left  till  the  arm  of  a 
Christian  power  made  itself  felt  upon  the  plains  of  Hin- 
dustan.    Mr.  Hobart,  joint  magistrate  of  Bustee,  reported, 

^Wilkins'  Modern  Hinduism,  p.  412.     London,  1887. 

'Anthropology,  p.  427.  Alexander  Sutherland's  Origin  and 
Growth  of  the  Moral  Instinct,  London,  1898,  gives  many  facts  in 
regard  to  the  prevalence  of  the  custom.  Vol.  I,  pp.  113-120; 
131-145. 

'Native  communications,  sent  to  the  writer  through  the  cour- 
tesy of  the  bishop  of  Madras,  detail  -with  great  minuteness  the 
ordinary  household  grief  upon  such  domestic  occasions. 


INFANTICIDE.  83 

in  1868,  the  results  of  his  own  visitations.  Among  the 
Baboos  of  Khudawur  Kalau,  in  seven  villages  visited  there 
were  one  hundred  and  four  boys, —  and  one  girl ;  in  nine- 
teen Baboo  villages  of  Nagpore,  two  hundred  and  ten  boys, 
and  forty-three  girls ;  in  two  Baboo  villages  of  Purtahgurh, 
thirty-one  boys,  and  one  girl;  in  nine  Baboo  villages  of 
Kumgurh,  seventy-one  boys,  and  seven  girls;  in  seventeen 
Thakoor  villages,  there  were  one  hundred  and  fifty-four 
boys,  and  fifty-four  girls.  The  Rev.  J.  T.  Gracey  wrote, 
in  1870,  that  the  recent  census  of  Amritsar  reported  three 
hundred  children  stolen  by  wolves  —  they  were  all  girls. 
The  Rev.  W.  A.  Gladwin  reported,  in  regard  to  the  same 
census,  that,  of  the  youth  in  the  Thakoor  villages  near  his 
home  at  Cawnpore,  it  was  found  that  but  three  to  five  per 
cent,  were  girls.  The  government,  thereupon,  stationed 
extra  police  in  one  hundred  and  sixty  villages  to  prevent 
child  murder.  The  difference  between  Hindustan  and 
some  Occidental  land,  like  America,  in  respect  to  the  sacred- 
ness  of  child  life,  cannot  be  more  compactly  stated:  in 
forty-four  villages,  there  were  five  hundred  and  seventy 
boys  and  only  one  hundred  and  six  girls;  we  can  imagine 
the  storm  that  would  be  raised  in  New  York  or  Ohio,  if  the 
census  of  1900  had  revealed  the  murder  of  three  hundred 
girls  in  one  community,  as  in  Amritsar;  or  if  the  census 
had  made  it  needful  to  send  special  police  to  watch  the 
murderous  homes  of  one  hundred  and  sixty  rural  com- 
munities in  Maryland  or  Illinois. 

It  is,  however,  stated  upon  eminent  authority  of  recent 
date  that  the  practice  of  infanticide  has  greatly  dimin- 
ished, certainly  so  in  extended  districts  of  India.  The 
stamping  of  this  custom  upon  the  common  people  must 
have  required  a  vast  number  of  generations,  since  the 
result  has  been  so  to  disturb  the  numerical  equality  of  the 
sexes  as  to  enhance  the  money  value  of  women  as  wives,^ — 

^Robert  Needham  Oust,  LL.  D.,  Pictures  of  Indian  Life,  pp.  339, 
340.     London,  1S81. 

McLennan's  Studies  in  Ancient  History,  second  series,  London, 
1896,  gives  many  facts  as  to  infanticide  in  India,  pp.  74-111. 


84  HINDU   HOMES. 

the  census  of  India  for  1880- '81  showing  fewer  women 
than  men  by  five  millions. 

The  writer  can,  however,  but  fear  that  he  has  overstated 
the  case.  He  w^ould  fain  believe  that  the  life  of  woman- 
hood in  Hindustan  is  not  so  dark  as  he  has  depicted,  and 
he  wishes  to  err  upon  the  side  of  understatement.  It  is 
not  in  human  nature  but  that  many  men  should  have 
appeared  upon  the  peninsula  worthy  of  wifely  devotion 
who  have  duly  reciprocated  the  adoration  of  their  help- 
meets. Of  the  innumerable  matches  made  in  Heaven,  God 
has  portioned  out  no  small  domestic  felicity  to  India  in  all 
these  ages.  In  many  happy  Hindu  homes  are  wives  who 
are  models  of  docility.  Is  there  not  an  ancient  song, — 
"A  wife  is  half  the  man,  his  truest  friend"?^  Wilkins 
details  the  points  given  him  by  a  native  Christian  Benga- 
lese  gentleman  in  regard  to  married  life  in  India :  it  accord- 
ing with  his  observation  that  the  Hindu  woman  has  a  good 
degree  of  domestic  happiness,  and  practically  more  free- 
dom particularly  among  the  poorer  classes  than  might  be 
expected  from  the  laws  relating  to  women.-  "Life  in  an 
Indian  Village"^  testifies  that  there  is  as  much  domestic 
affection  as  in  more  refined  parts  of  the  world,  and  that 
the  women  keenly  enjoy  the  pleasures  of  village  social  life. 
Professor  M.  Monier- Williams  says  in  regard  to  village  life, 
that  "The  wives  of  India,  unless  they  belong  to  the  upper 
classes,  have  complete  freedom  and  are  allowed  to  go  any- 
where. .  .  .  They  are  generally  loved;  and  cruel  treat- 
ment by  brutal  husbands  is  unknown.  Indian  wives  often 
possess  greater  influence  than  wives  of  Europe ;  and  an  old 
grandmother  will  sometimes  rule  a  whole  household  with 
a  rod  of  iron.  .  .  .  The  women  of  India  are  generally 
satisfied  with  their  position  and  desire  no  change."*     It  is 

^MaJiabharata,  I,  3028.     Sir  M.  Monier-Williams'  translation. 

-Modern  Hinduism,  pp.  356-8. 

^By  T.  Ramakrishna,  B.  A.,  pp.  100,  101.     London,  1891. 

^Brahmanism  and  Hinduism,  pp.  387,  388. 

It  is  to  be  noted  in  this  connection  that  the  village  population 
of  India  is  twenty  times  that  of  the  towns,  so  that  the  greater 
freedom  of  native  women  is  of  wide  extent. 


EFFECT  ON  HINDU  STOCK.  85 

•a  pleasure,  in  this  connection,  to  cite  Dr.  Jones,  a  highly- 
honored  resident  of  Hindustan  during  more  than  a  quarter 
of  a  century:  "The  women  of  India  compare  favorably 
with  the  fair  ones  of  any  land  in  womanly  grace,  in  beauty 
of  figure,  and  in  bewitching  charm  of  manner.  In  her 
town  and  village,  she  finds  ample  freedom,  and  figures  con- 
spicuously at  the  great  religious  festivals.  The  Hindu 
women  have  as  merry  a  laugh  as  their  sisters  in  any  other 
land.  They  have  learned  to  make  the  best  of  their  lot  and 
to  rejoice  in  it.^  It  is  reported  by  the  Rev.  B.  L.  Day,  in 
his  work  upon  Bengal  village  life,  that,  as  a  rule,  the 
widows  meet  with  much  sympathy ;  and  that  in  good  fam- 
ilies, a  widow  of  advanced  years  acquires  no  small  influence 
and  respect.  An  educated  Hindu  does  not  think  of  his 
mother  as  wanting  in  mental  culture  and  discipline  through 
her  inability  to  read ;  it  is  self-control,  self-denial,  the  devel- 
opment of  character,  which  constitutes  her  practical  educa- 
tion.^  Monier-Williams  speaks  of  the  veneration  in  which 
mothers  are  held  by  their  sons.  A  man  adores  his  mother, 
even  if  he  ignores  his  daughter  and  treats  his  wife  as  a 
thing. 

Yet,  having  said  so  much,  to  right  up  the  impression 
made  in  regard  to  woman's  condition  in  India,  the  facts 
still  remain, — 

that  by  Hindu  law  and  custom  the  woman  is  married 
W'hen  a  mere  child, 

that  she  is  by  theory  and  often  in  practice  in  a  servile 
relation  to  her  husband, 

that  she  is  kept  upon  a  low  intellectual  plane, 

that  in  widowhood  her  life  is  made  by  religion  harder 
than  in  any  other  part  of  the  world, 

that  she  lives  in  an  atmosphere  where  social  impurity  is 
upheld  by  religious  sanction, 

and  that  the  whole  status  of  womanhood  in  India  needs 
to  be   elevated  on  scientific  grounds:   not  otherwise  can 

^India's  Proilem,  pp.  146,  151. 

*Bipen  Chandra  Pal,  in  a  recent  address  in  Boston. 


86  HINDU   HOMES. 

the  breed  of  men  be  improved;    heredity    is    unrelenting-. 

The  wrongs  of  Hindu  womanhood  in  all  past  ages  have 
been  avenged  by  the  propagation  of  a  race  inferior  to  that 
which  would  have  peopled  Hindustan  to-day  had  the  domes- 
tic and  social  status  of  the  mothers  of  a  great  people  been 
of  a  different  character. 

And  if  it  be  true  in  view  of  all  the  facts  that  the  village 
women  keenlj^  enjoy  life,  and  are  so  generally  satisfied  with 
their  position  as  to  desire  no  change,  this  very  content  is.' 
proof  of  the  primitive  condition  of  a  society  in  which  a 
woman  is  married  without  her  choice  when  a  child,  in  which 
the  wife  is  subordinated  as  a  servant,  in  which  widowhood 
is  treated  with  indignity,  in  which  prostitution  exists  as  an 
acceptable  sacrifice  to  deity,  and  in  which  infanticide  is. 
used  to  keep  up  the  market  price  of  girls. 

When  the  time  comes  in  which  well  educated  and  widely 
traveled  Hindus  in  great  numbers  can  see  the  bearing  of 
modern  Hinduism  upon  womanhood,  will  they  not  assent 
to  the  affirmation  of  Sir  Henry  Maine,^  that  the  prime 
cause  of  the  lack  of  national  progress  is  the  position  the 
Hindus  give  to  their  women,  the  laws  being  harsh  to  excess  ? 
Is  it  not  true  that,  among  the  Vedic  men,  women  were  in 
better  condition,  that  a  "v^dfe  or  daughter  might  sacrifice  as 
a  husband  or  son,  that  women  had  sufficient  education  ta 
understand  the  formulas  uttered,  and  that  property 
descended  to  daughters  where  there  were  no  sons?  There, 
was  no  child  marriage;  no  self-immolation  or  peculiar  pri- 
vation for  widows,  nor  prohibition  of  the  re-marriage  of 
widows.  That  widows  should  be  permitted  to  re-marry  is 
now  advocated  by  some  advanced  Hindu  thinkers;  and  it 
must  be  that  the  whole  status  of  womanhood  in  other  par- 
ticulars vvill  some  day  be  modified  through  the  attention  of 
educated  Hindus  to  the  great  laws  of  a  higher  social  evolu- 
tion,—  justice,  fairmindedness,  and  the  general  improve- 
ment of  the  race  through  improving  the  maternal  stock.. 
Will  not  this  give  to  India  Hinduism  in  a  modified  form,. 
^Early  History  of  Institutions,  pp.  340,  341. 


BUDDHIST  HOMES.  87 

the  system  adapting  itself  to  a  new  age  ?  And  through  the 
hosts  of  philanthropic  workers  from  all  parts  of  the  globe, 
who  are  now  seeking  to  solve  sociological  problems  in  India, 
will  not  Hindu  society  be  permeated  with  certain  moral 
principles  that  experience  has  proved  to  be  of  value  to 
Occidental  peoples?  With  the  great  increase  of  native 
population,  under  peaceful  British  rule,  and  the  improved 
industrial  conditions  incident  to  the  investment  of  British 
capital,  and  the  introduction  of  new  ideas  of  domestic  and 
social  life  and  of  helpful  religious  thought,  it  is  to  be  looked 
for  that  the  densely  peopled  peninsula  will  contribute 
greatly  to  the  general  good  of  the  future  ages  of  mankind 
through  the  upbuilding  of  still  happier  homes  upon  the 
sunny  plains  of  India. 

II. 

In  the  Buddhist  founder,  Gautama  prince  of  India, 
there  reappeared  all  the  intellectual  acuteness  and  spirit- 
uality of  the  early  Aryan  sages.  He  not  only  gave  religious 
instruction  to  women,  but  it  is  even  said  that  he  thought 
to  establish  an  order  corresponding  to  the  nuns  of  a  later 
age  in  Christendom.  Nothing  could  have  better  indicated 
his  world-wide  departure  from  the  Brahmanical  traditions. 
Among  the  early  Buddhists,  women  were  several  times 
declared  to  have  reached  the  stage  of  spiritual  excellence, 
so  rarely  attained.^  In  those  countries,  where  Buddhism 
struck  deep  root,  the  condition  of  women  was  much 
improved ;-  certainly  so  in  Southern  Asia.  This  was  really 
one  ground  of  the  deserved  popularity  of  pristine  Bud- 
dhism, that  women  gained  by  it  throughout  the  East.^ 

^Buddhist  Birth-Stories,  p.  204.     T.  Rhys  Davids. 

^'Bigaudet's  Life  of  Gaudama,  Vol.  II,  p.  33,  note.  Rangoon, 
1866. 

'Yet  the  civilization  of  Ceylon,  although  manifestly  superior 
in  some  respects  to  that  of  Brahmanical  India,  has  failed,  after 
more  than  two  thousand  years  of  Buddhism,  to  elevate  the  homes 
of  all  the  people.     Yide  Buddhism  by  Rt.  Rev.  Reginald  S.  Cople- 


05  BUDDHIST   HOMES. 

No  country  in  the  world  is  more  purely  Buddhist  than 
Siam  has  been  for  twelve  hundred  years.  Here  we  see 
what  Buddhism  can  accomplish  for  the  home,  during  thirty- 
five  generations  of  absolute  and  undisturbed  sway.  As  to 
the  masses  of  people,  can  it  be  said  otherwise  than  that 
their  homes  are  not  unlike  those  which  we  imagine  in  study- 
ing a  primitive  people  uplifted  to  a  certain  plane  and 
arrested  in  development?  The  native  houses  are  raised 
upon  low  piles,  to  be  out  of  the  way  of  floods  and  of  rep- 
tiles. The  sides  are  constructed  of  bamboo,  and  the  roof 
of  palm.  There  is  no  chimney ;  but  a  fire  is  built  in  a  box, 
filling  the  house  with  smoke.  The  table  is  a  foot  square 
and  six  inches  high.  It  is  the  rule  to  eat  whenever  anyone 
is  hungry,  every  one  washing  his  own  dishes.  There  are 
plenty  of  fingers  but  no  forks.  The  refuse  is  dropped 
through  cracks  in  the  floor.  A  woman  has  little  sewing  to 
do  in  clothing  herself,  her  husband,  or  her  children.  In  an 
almost  daily  bath,  the  clothing  is  worn  into  the  water,  then 
dried  upon  the  person ;  this  being  so,  no  other  family-wash 
is  required.^  With  domestic  cares  so  light,  there  is  plenty 
of  time  for  women  to  work  out  of  doors, —  this  being  their 
principal  employment.  The  Siamese  woman  as  a  rule  looks 
as  rugged  as  a  man,  and  she  is  the  stronger  of  the  two  in 
rural  districts.  Siam  is  the  most  beautiful  region  of  the 
Eastern  Seas,  a  perpetual  summer  land  with  fruits  green 
and  ripe  appearing  upon  the  same  tree,  a  land  of  bloom 
and  flowers.  An  overflowing,  enriching  river  runs  through 
its  plain  for  four  hundred  and  fifty  miles,  the  vale  being 

ston,  bishop  of  Colombo,  p.  483:  it  being  stated  that  in  whole 
districts  marriage  is  unknown  among  the  lower  classes  of  Bud- 
dhists, the  rite  being  most  respected  in  regions  where  native 
Christian  homes  are  found. 

^Neale,  an  Englishman  in  the  Royal  Siamese  Service,  residing 
long  in  the  Bankok  of  half  a  century  ago  —  to  whom  the  writer 
is  indebted  for  much  information, —  speaks  of  a  bath  as  the  first 
thing  in  the  morning  and  last  at  night,  with  one  at  noon  in  very 
hot  days. —  Narrative  of  a  Residence  at  the  Capital  of  the  King- 
dom of  Siam,  by  F.  A.  Neale.     London,  1852. 


SI  AM.  89 

about  the  width  of  the  American  Red  River  country  in  the 
north.  This  arable  land  is  intersected  everywhere  by  cross 
canals  of  two  or  three  score  miles  in  length :  the  whole  coun- 
try is  a  garden  of  luxuriant  vegetation,  and  so  beautiful 
that  words  cannot  express  it.  The  bird  plumage  is  the 
richest  in  the  world,  as  if  the  very  wild  flowers  were  in 
flight.  It  is  a  country  of  amazing  resources,  for  the  most 
part  undeveloped.  Bankok  is  the  Venice  of  the  East,  a 
city  of  canals;  and  fifteen  thousand  homes  and  shops  are 
afloat,  with  nearly  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  people 
living  in  house-boats.  At  some  points  the  city  is  seven 
miles  wide,  and  it  extends  seven  miles  upon  either  side  of 
the  river,  which  is  a  quarter  of  a  mile  wide.  The  Siamese 
woman  is  treated  as  an  equal  by  the  man;  and  in  marital 
relations,  to  Neale  with  his  English  eyes  it  appeared  that 
if  there  was  not  love  between  them  there  was  almost  friend- 
ship —  as  he  quaintly  puts  it.  ]\Ir.  Henry  Alabaster,^  how- 
ever, who  knew  the  people  well,  says  that  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  domestic  happiness ;  and  that  suicides,  and  husband 
or  wife  murder,  are  rare.  Boys  are  schooled  by  the  Bud- 
dhist monks  for  a  year  or  two :  and  at  twelve  each  lad  begins 
life  for  himself,  with  a  canoe  for  an  outfit  and  sometimes  a 
little  money.  At  fourteen  he  marries.  A  girl  learns  to 
keep  house  till  eight,  then  to  peddle  in  a  boat  on  the  river. 
At  twelve  she  is  married ;  if  not,  at  thirteen  she  is  —  among 
the  great  multitude  of  the  poor  who  must  all  work  —  sold 
at  auction  for  a  serf  to  anyone  appearing  within  a  month. 
At  twenty-five  or  thirty,  the  child-couple  husband  and  wife, 
have  grown  old,  with  from  six  to  ten  children.  Travelers 
in  Siam  picture  to  us  the  aquatic  population  as  living  like 
ducks.  The  parental  boatman  and  his  wife  followed  by  a 
flock  of  babies,  each  one  paddling  a  tiny  boat;  mere  chil- 
dren becoming  expert  in  physical  exercises,  and  early  fitting 
themselves  to  set  up  establishments  of  their  own, —  with 
their  own  babies  to  care  for,  and  to  cast  off  with  early 
neglect.  This  is  not,  however,  the  way  the  natives  look 
^Wheel  of  the  Law.    London,  1S71. 


90  BUDDHIST  HOMES. 

at  it.  They  are  affectionate  toward  their  children,  who 
are  taught  to  entertain  respect  for  the  aged;  and  the  Bud- 
dhist beatitudes  bestow  a  blessing  on  those  who  support 
father  and  mother,  cherish  wife  and  child,  and  follow  a 
peaceful  calling.  Looked  at  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
highest  social  evolution,  does  not  such  coming  and  going- 
appear  like  the  generations  of  man  primeval ;  save  that  the 
recent  have  their  food  more  regularly  than  the  earlier,  and 
they  wear  more  ornaments,  and  have  more  semblance  of 
civilization?  Among  those  well-to-do,  there  is  the  same 
modicum  of  education,  a  certain  material  ease,  with  mod- 
erate aspirations  in  life.  To  Neale,  fifty  years  ago,  the 
people  as  a  whole,  to  his  Occidental  sense,  appeared  to  be, 
not  only  grossly  igTiorant  and  superstitious,  but  lost  to  all 
sentiments  of  moral  virtue.  Those  having  the  highest  out- 
look in  life,  with  spiritual  longings,  dwelt  apart  in  monas- 
teries, as  they  have  done  century  after  century.  Their 
blood  has  not  vivified  the  population.^  By  theory  they 
look  upon  domestic  life  as  a  snare  for  the  soul.  By  theory 
they  repress  all  desire,  even  for  the  improvement  of  society 
about  them.  They  let  things  drift  like  the  river.  Many 
centuries  ago  they  found  primitive  peoples  in  Southern 
Asia,  and  bade  them  treat  their  women  well  and  live  at 
peace  with  their  neighbors,  and  in  certain  particulars  ele- 
vated the  entire  population  throughout  vast  national  areas, 
yet  left  them  still  in  a  semi-pristine  condition.     If  to  Siam 

'The  Effect  of  Buddhist  Celibacy  on  Racial  Stock:  — 
If  we  consider  the  number  of  Buddhists  to-day,  and  how  many 
there  probably  have  been  in  the  less  densely  peopled  districts  of 
preceding  centuries,  and  consider  also  the  probable  proportion  of 
monks  and  lamas  in  any  given  generation,  judging  by  what  is 
true  to-day,  then  the  conclusion  is  inevitable  that  there  have 
been,  all  told,  many  more  men  in  the  maturity  of  their  powers 
withdrawn  from  society  and  leading  celibate  lives  than  the  total 
present  Buddhist  population  of  the  globe.  The  withdrawal  of 
the  wisest  and  the  best  in  every  generation  from  the  progenitors 
of  the  race,  when  carried  out  on  so  grand  a  scale  during  sixty  or 
seventy  generations,  must  have  exerted  great  influence  in  the 
hereditary  deterioration  of  the  race-stock  in  all  Buddhist  lauds. 


WOMEN    OF    BURMAH.  91 

the  test  of  heredity  be  applied,  it  can  but  be  looked  for  that 
the  crowding-  generations  coming  and  going  need  the  toucL 
of  other  ideas  and  ideals,  that  the  individual  homes  of  the 
people  may  afford  the  basis  for  a  progressive  society. 

It  is  needless  to  detail  what  are,  in  the  main,  similar 
social  and  domestic  conditions  in  Burmah.  This  country, 
so  long  known  to  the  West  as  farther  India,  is,  next  after 
Siam,  the  best  illustration  of  the  ancient  Buddhist  civiliza- 
tion, undisturbed  during  more  than  two  score  generations, 
by  diverse  influences,  brought  down  intact  to  our  own 
times.  Burmese  home  life  is  in  singular  contrast  with  the 
Hindu.  It  is  stated  by  Bishop  Titcomb,^  who  lived  long 
in  Burmah,  that  "The  w^omen  in  Buddhist  countries  are 
not  confined  to  their  own  houses  (as  in  parts  of  India  and 
Turkey),  or  debarred  the  privilege  of  appearing  fearlessly 
in  public.  They  are  seen  in  the  streets  freely  walking- 
about  with  their  children ;  they  sit  in  the  bazaars ;  they  ride 
publicly  in  carriages ;  they  are  the  companions  of  their  male 
relatives,  and  although,  according  to  all  Asiatic  usage,  they 
are  regarded  as  an  inferior  sex  by  their  lords,  yet  they  are 
far  more  elevated  in  every  respect  than  in  other  regions 
where  Buddhism  is  not  established."  Early  marriage  is 
the  custom,  but  it  is  made  by  the  parties  and  not  by  their 
parents.  Polygamy  is  not  common;  the  census  showing 
plural  waves  in  only  one  family  out  of  every  five  hundred. 
Divorce  is  so  easy  as  to  be  had  for  the  asking ;  yet  it  is  not 
common.  The  women  are  independent  to  a  degree  unusual 
in  the  East ;  not  unfrequently  engaging  in  trade  and  accu- 
mulating property  upon  their  own  account,  and  they  man- 
age all  domestic  finances.  Certain  features  of  the  home 
life  that  are  pictured  by  Nisbet,  appear  to  have  come  down 
from  rude  ages. 

In  gaining  a  firm  foothold  in  Japan,  in  the  seventh  cen- 
tury. Buddhism  effected  no  considerable  change  in  the 
native  ideas  and  customs  relating  to  home  life,  which  were 
not  unlike  those  of  India;  and  to  this  day  has  failed  to. 

^Buddhism,  pp.  122,  123.    Religious  Tract  Society.     London. 


92  BUDDHIST  HOMES. 

change  them.  Woman  was  anciently  considered  as  inferior 
to  man  as  the  earth  is  to  Heaven,  and  treated  accordingly. 
*' Woman  is  the  creature  of  man,"  it  was  said  in  a  famous 
book,  ' '  The  Greater  Learning  for  Women. "  As  a  piece  of 
property,  she  was  wholly  at  the  disposal  of  her  male  rela- 
tives; and,  among  the  poor,  was  subject  to  sale  for  a  life 
of  infamy.  In  "The  Greater  Learning,"  as  cited  by 
Dr.  M.  L.  Gordon,^  it  is  said  that ' '  The  customs  of  antiquity 
did  not  allow  men  and  women  to  sit  in  the  same  apartment, 
to  keep  their  wearing  apparel  in  the  same  place,  or  to  trans- 
mit to  each  other  anything  directly  from  hand  to  hand." 
A  daughter's  marriage  was  arranged  by  others  without  her 
assent;  and  often  at  so  early  an  age  that  her  babe  was  but 
a  new  plaything  to  dress  and  admire.  She  could  not  by 
law  hold  property ;  and,  if  left  a  widow,  her  unweaned  son 
became  the  head  of  the  house.  "The  only  qualities  that 
befit  a  woman, ' '  said  the  ' '  Greater  Learning, "  "  are  gentle 
obedience,  chastity,  mercy  and  quietness."  "After  mar- 
riage woman's  chief  duty  is  to  honor  her  father-in-law  and 
mother-in-law.  On  every  point  she  must  inquire  of  them, 
and  abandon  herself  to  their  direction."  "A  woman 
should  look  to  her  husband  as  Heaven  itself  and  never 
weary  of  thinking  how  she  may  yield  to  her  husband,  and 
escape  celestial  castigation. "  "Such  is  the  stupidity  of 
her  character  that  it  is  incumbent  on  her  in  every  par- 
ticular to  distrust  herself,  and  to  obey  her  husband." 
"Woman's  nature  is  passive  (literally  shade).  This  pas- 
siveness  being  of  the  nature  of  night,  is  dark.  Hence,  as 
viewed  from  the  standard  of  man's  nature,  the  foolishness 
of  woman  fails  to  understand  the  duties  that  lie  before  her 
very  eyes. "  "  Gusai ' ' — ' '  my  ignorant  wife ' ' —  she  is  called 
to-day  in  popular  speech.  Buddhism  in  Japan  teaches 
that  women  are  greater  sinners  than  men,  and  that  they 
can  never  enter  Nirvana  unless  first  changed  into  men. 

'Of  the  Doshisha  College,  Kyoto.  Author  of  the  American  Mis- 
sionary in  Japan,  and  a  series  of  valuable  works  upon  the 
-country. 


WOMANHOOD  IN   JAPAN.  93 

The  Buddhist  magazine,  The  Bukkyo,  in  1892,  had  an 
article  upon  the  "Nine  Difficulties  in  Life";  it  was  the 
second  difficulty  "To  be  a  man  and  yet  remain  free  from 
the  evil  influence  of  women":  the  WTiter  urging  that  the 
women  are  simply  obstacles  to  men, —  this  being  really  the 
monastic  theory  throughout  Buddhism.  Since  Gautama 
himself  forsook  his  wife,  child  and  kindred,  and  led  a  her- 
mit life,  that  he  might  find  the  greater  good,  it  has  been 
always  held  as  the  Buddhist  ideal  to  annihilate  love  as  well 
as  anger,  to  cherish  no  desires  for  this  world  or  the  next. 
"Let,  therefore,  no  man  love  anything.  Loss  of  the  beloved 
is  evil.  Those  who  love  nothing  and  hate  nothing  have  na 
fetters."^  This  doctrine  tends  easily  to  emphasize  the  dis- 
abilities put  upon  Japanese  wives  by  such  teachings  as 
have  come  down  to  the  present  generations  from  the  ancient 
books  of  their  nation.  "At  the  present  moment,"  says- 
Professor  Chamberlain,  translator  of  "The  Greater  Learn- 
ing," "the  greatest  duchess  or  marchioness  in  the  land  is 
still  her  husband's  drudge.  She  fetches  and  carries  for 
him;  bows  down  humbly  in  the  hall  when  my  lord  sallies 
forth ;  waits  upon  him  at  meals,  and  may  be  divorced  at  his 
good  pleasure."  It  is  much  to  say  of  the  Japanese  matron 
that  "she  accepts  her  humble  position  with  the  utmost 
sweetness  and  grace,  in  faithful,  self- forgetting  devotion."^ 
Divorce  is  allowed  for  any  one  of  seven  reasons,  or  prac- 
tically an  illimitable  number.  The  law  only  requires  that 
the  husband  erase  the  wife's  name  from  the  official  register 
of  his  family  and  have  it  re-entered  on  the  register  of  her 
famih^  On  her  part,  the  ^vife  hesitates  to  divorce  an 
unfaithful  husband,  since  the  law  gives  her  children  to 
their  father.  The  official  records  show  that  the  annual 
divorces  for  1884-1890  averaged  thirty-nine  per  cent,  of 
the  marriages;^  in  1897,  thirty- four  per  cent.;  in  1899,  less 

*The  Dhammapada,  Max  Miiller's  Sacred  Books  of  the  East, 
Vol.  X,  p.  211. 

^^Dr.  M.  L.  Gordon. 

^American  Statistical  Association  Publications,  III,  515. 


•9-4  BUDDHIST   HOMES. 

than  twenty-three.  Concubinage  does  much  to  destroy 
Japanese  home  life;  the  mother  of  many  children  being 
sometimes  divorced  if  she  objects.  Captain  Golovuin  of  the 
Russian  navy,  who  was  a  captive  in  Japan,  1811-1813,  says 
that  houses  of  ill  fame  were  not  considered  infamous,  and 
that  the  keepers  enjoyed  the  same  rights  as  merchants.^ 
This  was  the  outcome  of  Shintoism  and  Buddhism  in  Japan 
after  ages  of  undisputed  sway.  Griffis,  in  his  Mikado's 
Empire,  says  that  in  moral  characteristics  the  average  Jap- 
anese is  frank,  honest,  faithful,  kind,  gentle,  courteous, 
•contiding,  affectionate,  filial  and  loyal.  To  this  he  pain- 
fully adds  that  love  of  truth  for  its  own  sake,  chastity,  and 
temperance  are  not  characteristic  virtues;  and  it  is  this 
point  that  was  emphasized  by  Mrs.  Isabella  Bird  Bishop  ;- 
find  by  Neesima,  the  founder  of  the  Doshisha  College  at 
Kyoto, —  the  Shinto  and  Buddliist  habits  inimical  to  domes- 
tic life  leading  him,  as  a  youth,  to  seek  a  better  ideal  for 
the  homes  of  his  people.^ 

In  Sendai  and  the  provinces  the  Japanese  authorities 
voted  in  1890  to  put  an  end  to  the  houses  of  ill  fame ;  three 
years  being  allowed  to  adjust  property  claims.  This  vote 
was  not  due  to  Shinto  and  Buddhist  influence.  At  a  festive 
gathering  in  honor  of  Dr.  De  Forest,  an  American  mission- 
ary, the  editor  of  one  of  the  large  dailies  said,  "Look  all 
over  Japan.  Our  forty  millions  have  a  higher  standard  of 
morality  than  they  have  ever  known.  There  is  not  a  boy 
or  girl  throughout  the  empire  that  has  not  heard  of  the 
one-man-one-woman  doctrine.     When  we  inquire  the  cause, 

^Memoirs  of  a  Captivity,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  22,  second  edition.  Lon- 
don, 1824. 

-Unbeaten  Tracks  in  Japan,  II,  p.  240.     London,  1S80. 

^Story  of  Joseph  Neesima,  by  A.  S.  Hardy,  LL.  D.     Boston,  1892. 

As  to  the  relations  between  the  sexes  in  Japan,  a  few  years 
ago,  the  United  State  Consular  Reports  upon  Labor  in  Foreign 
Countries,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  324,  1884,  indicate  how  the  whole  matter 
appears  to  an  intelligent  foreigner,  recalling  what  books  on 
primitive  customs  say  of  the  promiscuous  herding  of  barbaric 
tribes. 


WOMANHOOD   IN   JAF\N.  95 

■vve  find  it  in  the  religion  of  Jesus  Cln-ist."  It  is  now 
Avidely  recognized  in  Japan  that  the  doctrine  of  chastity 
for  man  as  well  as  for  woman  is  one  of  the  contributions  of 
Christianity  to  national  ethics. 

The  rights  of  wife  and  child,  says  Dr.  D.  C.  Greene,  are 
now  better  secured  than  formerly.  And  in  the  present 
period  of  swift  transition,  the  ideal  of  home  life  often  more 
nearly  approaches  that  of  Christendom. 

Looked  at  in  a  large  way,  the  position  of  Japanese  women 
is  better  than  it  is  in  any  other  Eastern  nation.  The  great 
change  in  the  attitude  toward  them  is  manifested  by  the 
fact  that  the  public  school  system  of  Japan  employs  twelve 
thousand  women  teachers  and  that  in  fifty-two  of  the  higher 
schools  two-thirds  of  the  teachers  are  women.^ 

The  population  of  Japan,  which  for  a  long  time  had 
remained  stationary,  has  rapidly  increased  since  Western 
ideas  began  to  be  adopted, —  immorality  having  been 
checked,  infanticide  abolished,  marriage  encouraged,  and 
food  supplies  made  more  certain ;  the  census  increased  from 
thirty-three  to  forty-two  millions  between  1872  and  1895. 
The  blue  book  of  1905  gives  a  population  of  nearly  forty- 
eight  millions,  and  three  millions  in  Formosa. 

III. 

The  domestic  customs  of  no  other  great  people,  so  nearly 
homogeneous  as  the  Chinese,  more  nearly  approach  those  of 
a  race  little  elevated  above  primeval  condition.  This  is  noted 
in  ancestor  worship,  which  the  rest  of  the  world  shook  off 
ages  ago,  except  Japan  and  certain  barbaric  tribes.  In  no 
other  country  has  this  early  cult  held  its  ground  so  long 
and  affected  so  vast  a  population.  No  other  great  people, 
except  the  Romans,  have  maintained  the  custom  for  a  very 
extended  length  of  time  in  connection  with  a  semi-civiliza- 
tion. It  has  forty  centuries  behind  it.  It  has  been  of  value 
in  upbuilding  the  family,  giving  to  it  permanence.     The 

^De  Forest's  Sunrise  in  the  Sunrise  Kingdom,  p.  49. 


96  CHINESE    HOME    LIFE. 

worship  has  served  a  religious  end  in  the  absence  of  a  pop- 
ular knowledge  of  God:  of  religious  observances  this  has 
been  the  most  sacred.  The  ancestral  tablets  are  worshipped 
in  the  same  manner  as  the  popular  idols.  It  is  an  expres- 
sion of  filial  duty,  discharging  the  debt  due  to  one 'a 
parents.  It  has  kept  alive  a  belief  in  immortality,  and  a 
belief  that  ancestral  spirits  still  guard  their  posterity. 
Men  seek  the  approval  of  their  witnessing  ancestors.  As  a 
system  of  commemorative  rites,  which  was  all  the  meaning 
Confucius  put  into  the  custom,  it  is  likely  still  to  survive 
age  after  age.  That  it  has  persistently  grown  and  gathered 
strength  during  so  many  scores  of  generations  is  due  to 
Confucius.  Single  sentences  of  the  Chinese  classics  have 
been  among  the  most  potent  of  literary  powers.  Upon  a 
saying  of  IMencius  every  household  in  China  has  been 
built  — ' '  Of  the  three  offences  against  filial  piety,  the  great- 
est is  to  be  childless."  "The  greatest  sin  is  to  have  no 
son."  Every  man  must  leave  sons  to  continue  the  ances- 
tral worship  generation  after  generation.^ 

For  this  purpose  —  to  offer  sacrifice  for  their  parents  — 
daughters  are  of  no  avail.  They  are  not  of  value  except  to 
dispose  of,  to  some  other  family,  for  the  further  propaga- 
tion of  the  race.  In  Professor  Legge's  translation  of  the 
Book  of  Odes,  one  of  the  oldest  of  the  classics,  it  is  said 
of  the  daughters  of  the  king:  "It  will  be  theirs  neither  to 
do  wrong  nor  to  do  good. ' '  The  women  to-day  are  by  cus- 
tom never  counted  in  the  census  of  a  village.^  * '  The  mean 
ones  within  the  gate"  is  a  common  designation  for  woman. 
* '  Slave-girl, '  '*  instead  of  ' '  daughter, ' '  is  the  word  in  ordi- 
nary use.  She  is,  by  the  injunction  of  the  great  lawgiver, 
a  slave  to  the  three  obediences:  her  father  and  elder 
brother;  her  husband;  her  sons.  It  is  never  for  her  to 
develop  an  independent  individuality;  and  from  this  Con- 

Wide  President  William  A.  P.  Martin's  The  Chinese;  Lore  of 
Cathay;  Cycle  of  Cathay. 
*Dr.  William  Ashmore,  of  Swatow. 
'Ya-t'ou.    Arthur  H.  Smith. 


CHILDHOOD    BETROTHAL.  97 

fucian  condition  none  can  release  her.  Even  to  the  most 
saintly  of  the  Buddhist  women  of  China,  no  other  reward  is 
promised  but  to  be  born  as  a  man  in  the  next  transmi- 
gration.^ 

Yet  since  marriage  —  to  secure  the  succession  of  male 
issue  —  is  the  main  business  of  life,  daughters  are  in  regu- 
lar demand:  and  in  the  desire  to  dispatch  life's  main  busi- 
ness early,  betrothals  are  universally  made  by  the  parents, 
binding  children  to  marry,  long  before  the  character  of 
the  boy  is  formed.  Not  unfrequently  the  marriage  occurs 
before  the  conventional  age,  seventeen  and  twenty  for  bride 
and  groom.  On  the  part  of  the  bride's  parents,  in  South- 
ern China,  it  is  practically  a  sale,  as  much  so  as  the  sale 
of  cattle.  In  other  parts  a  dowry  may  be  given.  Includ- 
ing the  provinces  north  and  west  customs  differ,  and  the 
prices  differ.  Wives  themselves  are  often  sold  among  the 
vast  multitudes  of  the  poor,  in  hard  famine  years.^ 

Betrothed  as  children,  the  children  rarely  know  it;  the 
bride  not  seeing  the  groom  till  marriage.  Love  is  not  one 
of  the  antecedent  considerations  or  thought  of,  although  it 
may  be  developed  after  marriage.  The  best  of  the  Chinese 
merchants,  as  known  to  the  European  traders,  are  devoted 
to  their  families;  and  Professor  E.  K.  Douglas  testifies  that 
there  is  a  vast  deal  of  quiet,  happy  domestic  life  in  China. 

When  married,  the  boj^  is  as  much  under  the  control  of 
his  father  as  before,  and  his  wife  under  the  control  of  her 
mother-in-law.  Under  the  patriarchal  system,  "the  boy 
and  girl  who  are  married  are  not  a  new  family,"  says 
Smith,  "but  the  latest  branch  in  a  tall  family  tree,  inde- 
pendent of  which  they  have  no  familj^  existence."  The 
sons  bring  their  vvives  home,  and  finally  the  oldest  brother 

^President  Martin  saw  two  or  three  thousand  women  —  modest, 
graceful,  attractive,  not  stupid  but  ignorant, —  at  a  Buddhist  festi- 
val, praying  that  (in  their  next  transmigration)  they  might  be 
born  into  the  world  as  men. —  Cycle  of  Cathay. 

^'Arthur  H.  Smith's  Tillage  Life  in  China;  Archdeacon  Gray's 
China;  Lansdell's  Chinese  Central  Asia;  Rockhill's  Land  of  the 
Lamas. 

1 


98  CHINESE  HOME  LIFE. 

succeeds  the  father  as  head  of  the  house,  ruling  over  his 
younger  brothers, —  all  earnings  going  into  the  coraraon 
fund.  The  bride  upon  coming  into  this  household  does  not 
come  as  her  husband's  companion.  There  are  no  family- 
meals  in  common,  nor  does  the  wife  wait  upon  her  husband 
as  in  India.  The  men  in  the  morning  are  often  seen  break- 
fasting by  the  roadside,  squatt'ing  each  in  front  of  his  own 
door.  The  house-mother  within  reigns  supreme,  this  being 
the  only  opportunity  she  has  in  a  lifetime  to  develop  her 
own  personality;  so  long  as  she  lives,  her  daughter-in-law 
is  always  a  "child."  If  the  "child"  is  capable  of  raising 
a  domestic  typhoon  upon  any  and  every  occasion,  she  will 
hold  her  own  with  her  mother-in-law  and  with  her  husband ; 
otherwise  she  relapses  into  silent  submission,  subject  to  ill- 
treatment  until  she  in  turn  becomes  a  mother-in-law. 

As  to  domestic  vice,  it  was  stated  by  Professor  S.  Wells 
Williams  that  the  Chinese  "are  vile  and  polluted  in  a 
shocking  degree," — but  the  untold  misery  of  concubinage 
is  not  common  unless  to  secure  male  issue. 

Confucian  divorce  may  be  for  any  one  of  seven  reasons 
as  to  the  wife,  but  the  law  recognizes  no  ground  upon  which 
the  wife  can  divorce  her  husband.^  A  divorced  woman 
cannot  return  to  her  childhood  home,  there  being  no  pro- 
vision for  her  support,  the  land  being  for  her  parents  and 
her  brothers :  on  this  account  her  family  contest  a  divorce, 
unless  she  can  be  married  elsewhere. 

The  pressure  of  poverty  in  China  is  so  great  that  infan- 
ticide extensively  prevails  when  parents  cannot  afford  to 
keep  a  daughter  till  old  enough  to  marry.-  The  Con- 
fucianists,  the  Taoists,  the  Buddhists,  the  great  literary 
class,  the  governmental  power,  the  moral  maxims  of  revered 

^Professor  Douglas'  China.    London,  1882. 

-Upon  Chinese  infanticide,  vide  Legge's  Religions  of  China,  p. 
Ill;  Williams'  Middle  Kingdom,  II,  p.  98;  Smith's  Village  Life, 
pp.  308,  309;  Doolittle's  Social  Life  among  the  Chinese;  Martin's 
Cycle  of  Cathay,  pp.  107,  108;  Professor  E.  H.  Parker's  China  Past 
and  Present,  pp.  387-397.     London,  1903. 


CONGESTING    POPULATION.  99 

sages,  the  hero  worship  and  ancestral  worship  of  forty  cen- 
turies, the  official  recognition  of  God  once  a  year, —  have 
all  been  powerless  to  protect  the  Chinese  people  from  this 
crime,  that  illustrates  the  low  value  put  upon  womanhood. 

The  great  doctrine  of  Mencius  —  to  leave  "posterity" 
for  the  support  of  ancestral  worship  —  has  led  the  poorest, 
the  most  vicious,  the  most  diseased,  and  the  most  criminal  — 
whatever  else  they  do  in  life  —  to  make  sure  of  sons  to 
honor  them  after  death.  To  do  them  this  honor,  every 
household  remains  near  the  ancestral  graves,  and  the  whole 
population  is  congested  within  fixed  areas, —  although  there 
are  districts  to  which  they  might  remove.  This  is  the  gen- 
eral statement:  Chinese  emigration  to  other  lands  being 
relatively  limited,  and,  in  the  intent,  a  temporary  expedient. 
In  the  awful  pressure  of  poverty  through  over-population 
the  Chinese  woman  is  the  drudge,  ceaselessly  bearing  chil- 
dren, ceaselessly  at  work  by  the  way  or  in  the  fields  as  well 
as  within  the  house  —  and  ceaselessly  contributing  to  the 
vast  quota  of  female  suicides  in  China,  sweeping  off  now 
and  then  in  an  epidemic  of  self-destruction. 

Yet,  however  true,  this  fails  to  give  a  correct  impression : 
Chinese  home  life  is  more  cheery, —  or  it  looks  so  to  strang- 
ers. The  villagers  appear  to  be  of  a  happy  race.  But  pes- 
simism justly  falls  back  upon  heredity,  and  claims  that  the 
ingrained  habits  of  four  score  generations  have  hindered 
the  rise  of  new  domestic  ideals  in  the  empire ;  and  that  ani- 
mal spirits  are  everywhere  found  among  uncultured  peoples. 

IV. 

The  Occidental  proverb,  that  there  are  no  homes  in  Asia, 
finds  no  exception  in  Moslem  lands ;  and  for  the  Turks,  they 
have  too  recently  come  out  of  their  primitive  condition  to 
easily  honor  womanhood.  Female  infanticide  was  common 
in  Arabia  before  Mohammed  introduced  a  new  rule.  Yet 
the  women  of  the  desert  were  relatively  free.     The  old-time 


100  MOSLEM    HOMES. 

poems  show  that  their  personal  standing  was  better  than 
it  has  ever  been  under  Islam.^ 

As  to  legal  status :  a  daughter  shares  equally  with  a  son 
in  her  father 's  estate ;  the  property  she  has  before  marriage 
is  always  under  her  control;  the  courts  are  as  open  to  her 
as  to  a  man;  her  husband  must  provide  for  her  a  dowry, 
and  this  she  has  in  the  event  of  divorce;  divorce  is  impos- 
sible on  the  part  of  the  wife,  being  wholly  at  the  option  of 
the  husband  without  assigning  any  reason.  The  Koran, 
toward  mothers,  commends  reverential  and  affectionate  con- 
duct,— ' '  The  son  gains  paradise  at  the  feet  of  the  mother ' ' ; 
and  to  those  who  bear  and  train  children  the  same  rank  is 
bestowed  in  Heaven  that  is  given  to  martyrs.  By  perpetual 
Koranic  law  women  are  separated  from  the  outer  world  by 
mantle  and  veil  upon  the  street,  but  great  freedom  of  move- 
ment is  allowed  if  they  associate  only  with  women.  By 
custom  they  do  not  attend  public  prayers  in  the  mosques; 
it  being  thought  not  conducive  to  devotion. 

Mohammed's  third  wife,  Ayesha,  was  but  nine  years  old 
when  married;  she  dropped  her  playthings  when  he  came 
for  her.  The  majority  of  Moslem  girls  to-day  are  married 
between  nine  and  twelve ;  and  at  sixteen  have  passed  their 
prime.  This  is  true  at  least  among  the  fifty-seven  millions 
of  Moslems  in  India.  In  Turkey  the  age  of  marriage  for 
girls  is  from  eleven  to  fourteen,  for  boys  seventeen  or  more.^ 

As  in  Hindustan,  so  in  no  small  part  of  the  Turkish 
Empire  the  old-time  patriarchal  system  is  still  in  vogue; 
families  of  thirty  or  forty  being  not  uncommon,  in  which 
every  wife  is  almost  literally  the  slave  of  her  mother-in-law. 

Mohammed  had,  first  and  last,  sixteen  wives,  and  so 
many  at  one  time  that  his  followers  found  fault  that  they 

^Studies  in  a  Mosque,  Stanley  Lane  Poole,  pp.  23-25.  London, 
1883. 

^People  of  Turkey.  Edited  by  Stanley  Lane  Poole,  II,  79.  Lon- 
don, 1878.     Dwight's  Constantinople,  pp.  123,  124. 

Dwight,  p.  102,  says  that  the  consent  of  the  bride  is  not  essen- 
tial, and  she  is  never  present  at  the  marriage  ceremony,  her  legal 
representatives  signing  the  contract. 


PLUR.VL   WIVES.  101 

were  limited  each  to  four.  The  thirty-third  Sura  was 
inserted  in  the  Koran  to  justify  this  liberty:  "A  peculiar 
privilege  granted  unto  thee  above  the  rest  of  the  true  believ- 
ers." So,  too,  he  had  a  special  permit  to  justify  his  taking 
the  divorced  wife  of  Cyd,  his  adopted  son:  -'No^  criihc  is  in 
be  charged  on  the  prophet  as  to  what'  God  halh. ■allowed 
him. '  '^  Among  the  Arabs  of  the  seventh  "centUiy  Mt)h&iti- 
med  looked  upon  women,  says  Stanley  Lane  Poole,  "as 
charming  snares  to  the  believer,  ornamental  articles  of  fur- 
niture difficult  to  keep  in  order,  pretty  playthings ;  but  that 
a  woman  should  be  the  counsellor  and  companion  of  man 
does  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to  him.  Mohammed  was 
not  the  man  to  make  a  social  reform  affecting  women,  nor 
was  Arabia  the  country  in  which  such  a  change  could  be 
made,  nor  Arab  ladies,  perhaps,  the  best  subjects  for  the 
experiment."-  The  Koran  permits  to  believers  as  many 
concubine  slave- women  as  may  be  desired;  but  wives  are 
limited  to  four  at  one  time, —  although  it  is  easy  by  fre- 
quent divorces  to  multiply  them.  Bishop  Thoburn  says 
that  among  Mohammedans  in  India,  divorce  is  so  common 
that  a  man  may  be  married  a  great  many  times;  and  even 
for  a  limited  time,  as  for  so  many  months.^  "Polygamy 
is  exceptional  in  the  land  of  the  Nile, ' '  says  Lane 's  Modern 
Egypt,  "but  there  are  certainly  not  many  persons  in  Cairo 
who  have  not  divorced  one  wife  if  they  have  been  long 
married,"  and  "many  have  during  ten  years  married 
twenty  or  thirty."*     Rarely  does  a  Turk  have  more  than 

'The  motive  for  this  multiplication  of  wives  was  doubtless  the 
desire  for  male  issue,  and  no  one  may  speak  upon  it  upon  other 
ground.  A  notable  Moslem  tradition,  says  Professor  Macdonald 
—  as  well  authenticated  as  any  tradition, —  declares  it  to  be  a 
saying  of  the  Prophet  that  "Adultery  of  the  eyes  is  looking"; 
which  is  explained  by  Moslem  scholars  as  meaning  exactly  what 
Jesus  meant, —  Uthman  threatening  a  sinner  of  this  sort  with 
punishment  if  he  did  not  repent. 

-Studies  in  a  Mosque,  pp.  102,  103. 

Hndia  and  Malaysia.  By  J.  M.  Thoburn,  thirty-three  years  a 
missionary  in  India,  p.  36S.     New  York,  1892. 

*Vol.  I,  pp.  199,  2GS,  273-4.     Third  edition,  London,  1842. 


102  MOSLEM    HOMES. 

one  wife  ;^  it  being  too  costly,  since  the  wives  by  law  must 
be  treated  with  equality  or  the  expense  for  one  matched 
for  that  of  others.  Among  the  wealthy  this  is  no  obstacle, 
,  and  the  .slaye  market  is  always  open.  The  Koran  main- 
-tains!  poryg'a'my,  divorce,  and  slavery  as  perpetual  institu- 
tions jn*  Islam;,  Tamerlane,  in  conquering  Bayazet  I,  cap- 
tbred"  his"  harem ;'  and  never  since  has  the  Turkish  sultan 
had  a  wife,  his  harem  being  composed  of  slaves  —  every 
slave  receiving  freedom  who  has  a  son  born  to  her.  This 
court  fashion  is  very  influential  with  those  who  can  afford 
the  expense.  The  effect  is  to  cast  a  stigma  upon  the  reli- 
gious system  of  the  Mussulmans.  Mr.  Stanley  Lane  Poole, 
who  has  for  years  made  a  specialty  of  Mohammedan  studies, 
a  thoroughgoing  English  scholar  of  high  rank  in  his  depart- 
ment, has  spoken  strongly  on  this  point: — "As  a  social  sys- 
tem, Islam  is  a  complete  failure :  it  has  misunderstood  the 
relation  of  the  sexes,  upon  which  the  whole  character  of 
the  nation's  life  hangs,  and,  in  degrading  woman,  has 
degraded  each  successive  generation  of  their  children  down 
an  increasing  scale  of  infamy  and  corruption,  until  it  seems 
almost  impossible  to  reach  a  lower  level  of  vice."^  Mr. 
Poole  (page  107)  cites  the  correspondent  of  a  well-known 

'Doctor  Macdonald  cites  Malcolm's  Five  Years  in  a  Persian 
Toicn,  to  the  effect  that  the  law  of  dowry  was  so  worked  in 
Persia,  and  in  Malcolm's  time  in  India,  as  to  render  divorce  of 
the  wife  impossible;  that  is,  if  the  wife's  relatives  were  powerful 
enough  so  to  arrange  it.  The  man  also  might  be  put  under  bonds 
not  to  take  a  second  wife. 

The  general  statement  is  made  by  Professor  H.  P.  Smith:  that 
comparatively  few  Mohammedans  have  more  than  one  wife  at  a 
time;  but  there  are  comparatively  few  who  have  not  put  away 
more  than  one  wife  in  order  to  take  another. —  The  Bible  and 
Islam;  the  Ely  Lectures  for  1897,  p.  362.     New  York. 

'^Studies  ill  a  Mosque,  pp.  101,  102. 

As  to  purity  of  life,  it  is  said  by  the  Prophet:  "God  wishes  to 
make  it  light  for  you,  for  man  was  created  weak.  If  ye  avoid 
great  sins  from  which  ye  are  forbidden,  we  will  cover  your 
offences,  and  make  you  enter  with  a  noble  entrance."  Sura  IV, 
30-35.     As  a  comment,  consult  Dwight's  Constantinople,  p.  61. 


SLAVE   WOMEN,  103 

London  newspaper:  "Between  Christianity  and  Islam,  it 
is  enough  to  notice  that  there  is  apparently  no  country 
where  the  first  is  the  prevailing  religion,  in  which  woman  is 
hindered  by  religion  from  obtaining  a  position  almost,  if 
not  quite,  on  an  equality  with  man ;  and  similarly,  no  coun- 
try Avhere  the  second  prevails  where  woman  is  not  in  a 
degraded  position.  Under  Christianity,  she  is  everywhere 
free.  Under  Islam,  she  is  everywhere  a  slave.^  In  Tur- 
key (to  continue  Poole's  citation),  "when  a  son  is  born 
there  is  nothing  but  congratulations;  when  a  daughter, 
nothing  but  condolences.  A  polite  Turk,  if  he  has  occa- 
sion to  mention  his  wife,  will  do  so  w^ith  an  apology.  He 
regards  it  as  a  piece  of  rudeness  to  mention  the  fact  to  you ; 
and  it  would  be  equally  rude  for  him  to  inquire  after  your 
wife,  or  to  hint  that  he  knew  you  were  guilty  of  anything 
so  unmentionable  as  to  have  one.  As  the  Turk  never  means 
to  see  much  of  his  wife,  intelligence  or  education  is  a  mat- 
ter of  small  account.  If  he  can  afford  it,  he  will  have  a 
Circassian  wife,  a  woman  who  has  been  reared  with  the 
intention  of  being  sold;  who  has  not  an  idea  in  her  head, 
who  has  seen  nothing,  and  knows  nothing.  She  is  beau- 
tiful, and  beauty  is  all  he  requires."  Circassian  slavery 
is  a  regular  industry,  the  slave  being  reared  for  it,  and 
voluntarily  entering  it  at  a  price  —  deliberately  choosing 
a  life  of  shame.  "Concubinage,"  says  Mr.  Poole,  "is  the 
black  stain  of  Islam.  It  is  a  system  of  white  slaves  passing 
from  master  to  master."  Mrs.  Isabella  Bird-Bishop  reports 
that  she  was  storm-bound  or  peril-bound  in  more  than  fifty 
women's  houses  in  Oriental  travel.  "In  a  rich  man's 
harem,"  she  says,-  "there  are  women  of  all  ages  and  colors, 

^Broadly  yet  truly  it  may  be  said  that  the  seclusion  of  Moslem 
women,  with  all  its  disastrous  effects  at  the  present  day  for  a 
population  of  two  hundred  millions,  runs  back  to  the  fact  that 
A'Isha,  the  fourteen-year-old  wife  of  Mohammed,  once  lost  a  neck- 
lace under  what  the  gossips  of  the  time  thought  were  suspicious 
circumstances. —  Muslim  Theology,  Jurisprudence,  etc.  By  D.  B. 
Macdonald,  D.  D. 

^Address  Ecumenical  Conference,  New  York,  1900. 


104  MOSLEM    HOMES. 

girl  children,  and  very  young  boys.  There  are  the  favorite 
and  other  legitimate  wives;  concubines,  who  have  recog- 
nized, but  very  slender  rights;  discarded  wives,  who  have 
been  favorites  in  their  day  and  who  have  passed  into  prac- 
tical slavery  to  their  successors;  numbers  of  domestic  slaves 
and  old  women ;  daughters-in-law,  and  child  or  girl  widows 
whose  lot  is  deplorable,  and  many  others.  I  have  seen  as 
many  as  two  hundred  in  one  house  —  a  great  crowd,  privacy 
being  unknown,  grossly  ignorant,  with  intolerable  curiosity, 
forcing  on  a  stranger  abominable  or  frivolous  questions, 
then  relapsing  into  apathy,  but  rarely  broken,  except  by  out- 
breaks of  hate  and  the  results  of  successful  intrigue.  It 
may  be  said  that  there  are  worse  evils  than  apathy.  There 
are  worse  evils,  and  they  prevail  to  a  great  extent  in  upper- 
class  houses.  On  more  than  fifty  occasions  I  have  been 
a.sked  by  women  for  drugs  which  would  kill  the  reigning 
favorite,  or  her  boy,  or  make  her  ugly  or  odious.  In  the 
house  of  the  Turkish  governor  of  an  important  vilayet, 
where  I  was  storm-bound  for  a  week,  the  favorite  wife  was 
ill,  and  the  husband  besought  me  to  stay  in  her  room  lest 
some  of  the  other  women  should  make  away  with  her.  My 
presence  was  no  restraint  on  the  scenes  of  fiendishness  which 
were  enacted.  Scandal,  intrigue,  fierce  and  cruel  jeal- 
ousies, counting  jewels,  painting  the  face,  staining  the  hair, 
quarrels,  eating  to  excess,  getting  rid  of  time  by  sleeping, 
listening  to  impure  stories  by  professional  reciters,  and 
watching  small  dramas  played  by  slaves,  occupy  the 
unbounded  leisure  of  eastern  upper-class  women.  Of  these 
plays,  one  of  which  was  produced  for  my  entertainment,  I 
can  only  say  that  nothing  more  diabolically  vicious  could 
enter  the  polluted  imagination  of  man,  and  it  was  truly 
pitiful  to  see  the  keen,  precocious  interest  with  which  young 
girl  children,  brought  up  amid  the  polluting  talk  of  their 
elders,  gloated  over  scenes  from  which  I  was  compelled  to 
avert  my  eyes. '  '^ 

'For  the  same  thing  in  Christian  domestic  circles,  see  St.  John's 
Life  in  a  Levantine  Family. —  Noted  by  D.  B.  M. 


INFLUENCE    ON    RACIAL    STOCK.  105 

Do  we  inquire  what  the  principle  of  heredity  is  doing  for 
Turkish  society  ?  During  the  formative  years  of  life,  little 
children  of  both  sexes,  the  children  of  the  wealthiest  and 
most  influential  citizens,  are  brought  up  in  an  atmosphere 
of  pollution.  The  wife  and  daughter  of  a  British  consul, 
residing  here  and  there  in  the  Turkish  Empire  during 
twenty  years,  prepared  a  book  upon  "The  people  of  Tur- 
key," which  was  edited  by  Mr.  Stanley  Lane  Poole,  to 
whom  Islam  is  so  greatly  indebted  for  laborious  years  in 
expounding  their  faith,  customs  and  history.  The  language 
of  this  book  is  quoted,  with  slight  modifications  and  re-ar- 
rangement, for  the  sake  of  connected  statement  and  clear- 
ness upon  the  point  in  hand.^  The  citation  relates  not  so 
much  to  the  great  mass  of  the  people  as  to  the  higher 
classes,  the  leaders  in  social  life,  and  those  through  whom 
the  government  is  administered.  It  appears  that,  so  far  as 
concerns  the  child  training  of  the  higher  classes,  a  sedate 
deportment  —  for  which  the  Turk  is  famous  —  is  expected 
in  the  presence  of  his  father  and  of  guests;  but  the  forma- 
tion of  moral  character  is  left  to  childish  impulse,  directed 
by  menials  and  slaves. 

In  those  early  years  spent  at  home,  says  this  English 
matron,  when  the  child  ought  to  have  instilled  into  him 
some  germ  of  those  principles  of  conduct  by  which  men 
must  walk  in  the  world  if  they  will  hold  up  their  heads 
among  civilized  nations,  the  Turkish  child  is  taught  only 
the  first  steps  towards  those  vicious  habits  of  mind  and 
body  which  have  made  his  race  what  it  is.^  Each  boy  of 
the  better  class  of  families  in  Turkey  has  a  dadi,  a  slave 

^The  People  of  Turkey.    Compare  Vol.  II,  pp.  153,  160,  et  al. 

"It  should,  however,  be  held  firmly  in  mind  that  —  whatever  the 
usage  may  be  in  too  many  families, —  the  theory  of  Islam  places 
great  stress  upon  the  suitable  moral  and  religious  training  of 
boys. —  Tide  an  Article  upon  the  Moral  Education  of  the  Young 
among  Muslims,  by  Professor  Duncan  Black  Macdonald,  in  the 
International  Journal  of  Ethics,  April,  1905. 

If  there  is  discrepancy  between  theory  and  practice,  the  same  is 
true  of  Christian  lands. 


106  MOSLEM   HOMES. 

girl,  to  care  for  him  from  infancy;  often  an  evil  use  is 
made  of  this  intimacy.  Besides,  there  is  a  lala,  a  male 
slave  who  has  the  oversight  of  both  sexes  when  out  of  the 
harem.  He  takes  them  into  the  servants'  hall,  where  the 
most  obscene  jokes  are  played  upon  them,  and  where  the 
conversation  is  most  revolting.  Out  of  sight  of  their 
parents,  and  in  the  company  of  menials,  they  have  no 
restraint  placed  upon  them  in  the  use  of  the  most  licentious 
language.  There  is  no  reserve  of  language  observed  by 
their  elders  before  young  girls. 

If  there  be  truth  in  the  saying  of  De  Tocqueville,  that 
the  home  is  the  corner-stone  of  the  nation,  how  can  Turkey 
become  a  highly  civilized  state?  To  recur  to  the  Studies 
in  a  Mosque:^  "It  is  the  sensual  and  degraded  view  of 
woman  that  destroys  to  so  great  an  extent  the  good  influence 
which  the  better  part  of  the  teaching  of  Islam  might  exert 
in  the  East.  So  long  as  women  are  held  in  so  light  an 
esteem,  they  will  remain  vapid,  bigoted,  and  sensual;  and 
so  long  as  mothers  are  what  most  Moslem  mothers  are  now, 
their  children  will  be  ignorant,  fanatical,  and  vicious.  .  .  . 
It  is  quite  certain  that  there  is  no  hope  for  the  Turks  so 
long  as  Turkish  women  remain  what  they  are  and  home 
training  is  the  initiation  of  vice."  "In  all  civilized  and 
wealthy  countries,  the  social  system  of  Islam  exerts  a  ruin- 
ous influence  on  every  class,  and  if  there  is  to  be  any  great 
future  for  the  Mohammedan  world,  that  system  of  society 
must  be  done' away." 

The  writer's  private  letters  of  inquiry,  have,  however, 
elicited  more  cheering  reports  from  different  portions  of 
the  Turkish  Empire.-  A  medical  missionary,  with  access 
to  great  numbers  of  native  homes  in  Turkey  in  Asia,  writes : 
"It  is  not  true  that  either  women  or  children  are  ill-treated 
in  this  part  of  Turkey.  The  Turk  rarely  marries  more 
than  one  wife;  and  the  affection  displayed  in  the  harem 
might  often  teach  a  lesson  to  homes  in  more  highly  favored 

^Pages  108,  114. 

^Bearing  date  in  April,  1894. 


COUNTER    CONSIDERATIONS.  107 

lands. ' '  Another  correspondent  widely  separated  from  the 
physician  alluded  to,  describes  a  very  delightful  Moslem 
home,  that  of  a  Pasha:  "The  husband  is  kind;  the  wife 
intelligent,  devout,  and  very  good  to  the  poor."  And  he 
cites  his  experience  of  twenty  years,  to  show  the  sociolog- 
ical gains  through  the  increasing  attention  which  Turkish 
husbands  and  fathers  give  to  securing  suitable  medical 
attendance.  Another  letter,  from  an  American  philan- 
thropist residing  in  Central  Turkey,  relates  that  within  a 
score  of  years,  it  has  been  noted,  that  the  old  patriarchal 
system  is  to  some  extent  yielding  to  the  pressure  brought 
to  bear  by  newly  married  youth  of  some  education,  who 
forsake  father  and  mother,  and  set  up  their  own  home,  to 
train  their  own  children.  It  is  very  gratifying,  too,  that 
young  men,  not  a  few,  of  well-to-do  families  are  gaining, 
through  education  in  England,  a  much  higher  notion  of 
women,  and  what  service  they  are  capable  of  rendering  tO" 
men  as  companions. 


If  the  foregoing  sections  of  this  chapter  have  not  over- 
stated the  case, —  still  they  may  leave  an  exaggerated 
impression  through  lack  of  data  for  brief  corrective  state- 
ments to  make  the  generalizations  more  just:  of  some  two 
hundred  million  families  alluded  to  under  the  different 
religions,  there  must  be  among  them  more  domestic  love 
and  happiness  than  appears  in  books  of  history  or  travelers* 
tales,  and  love  must  largely  illumine  the  face  of  the  world. 
Is  not  the  heart  of  youth  forever  upspringing  in  purely 
animal  vivacity,  that  gives  a  vast  zest  to  living?  The  fes- 
tal crowds  in  sunny  lands  have  no  such  sense  of  domestic 
depression  as  might  be  easily  inferred  from  general  state- 
ments that  make  little  allowance  for  the  immense  fund  of 
individual  and  conjugal  happiness,  found  among  all 
peoples  —  the  gift  of  the  All-Father  provided  in  the  very 
constitution  of  man,  which,  at  its  best  and  in  normal  con- 


108  HOME   BUILDING. 

dition,  is  always  aspiring,  hopeful  and  resolute.  Would 
it  not  be  possible  to  give  an  utterly  false  impression  of  home 
life  in  Christendom,  by  recording  the  infelicity  of  the  poor- 
est of  the  poor,  and  of  the  most  vicious  of  the  vile,  and  of 
abnormal  erratic  types,  without  balancing  the  statement 
by  recording  what  the  observer  may  not  have  noted  in  the 
lives  of  the  better  class  of  citizens  —  the  unrecorded  joy 
of  myriads  of  homes? 

It  is,  however,  evident  enough  that  the  social  evolution 
of  mankind  is  in  its  elementary  stages ;  and  to  any  unbiased 
student  it  will  appear  that  Christianity  has  been  very 
slowly  and  very  imperfectly  evolving  those  cardinal  prin- 
ciples which  appear  to  differentiate  home  life  in  Christen- 
dom from  that  of  non-Christian  countries.  Perhaps  the 
most  that  can  be  done  is  to  inquire  whether  there  has  been 
in  Christendom  a  tendency  toward  a  continuously  pro- 
gressive development  of  the  individuality  of  woman  in  her 
domestic  life,  and,  if  so,  in  what  way  it  has  been  brought 
about,  and  what  relation  it  sustains  towards  producing  an 
improved  stock  of  manhood  in  subsequent  generations ;  and 
to  inquire  what  principles  have  been  at  work  that  have 
affected  the  home  life  of  childhood  in  Christendom,  tend- 
ing towards  the  development  of  man 's  higher  powers. 

In  pursuing  these  inquiries,  it  will  be  assumed  that 
Christendom  is  at  one  with  Judaism  in  respect  to  a  certain 
line  of  ideas  transmitted  from  generation  to  generation.^ 
These  inquiries   are  tentative   only;   and  a  disclaimer  is 

^For  a  brief  statement  of  the  substantial  unity  of  Hebraism  and 
Christianity,  with  the  points  of  difference,  vide  ''The  Philoso- 
phy of  the  Christian  Religion"  By  A.  M.  Fairbairn,  LL.  D.,  pp. 
261,  262. 

Harnack's  Expansion  of  Christianity,  New  York,  1904,  refers  to 
the  Judaic  background  of  the  religious  movement  described  in  the 
Uew  Testament:  pp.  300,  301,  357-361,  3G3. 

"Christianity  was  a  Jewish  development."— Toy's  "Judaism 
and  Christianity,'"  pp.  1,  370.     Boston,  1890. 

Yet,  like  botanists  working  upon  cut  flowers,  there  are  writers 
upon  Christian  society  who  neglect  the  roots. 


JUDAIC   AND    CHRISTIAN   IDEAS.  10^ 

entered  as  to  unholy  emphasizing  any  comparisons  that 
may  be  made  with  non-Christian  systems  upon  any  point. 
It  is  not  so  important  to  question  whether  the  principle* 
that  have  been  outworking  in  Judaism  and  Christianity 
have  been  also  at  work  in  other  religions,  as  to  ask  whether 
the  present  difference  in  domestic  life  and  social  efficiency 
between  Christian  and  non-Christian  peoples  is  probably 
due  in  no  small  measure  to  the  prominence  given  to  those 
principles  in  Christendom. 

(1)  As  to  the  slow  evolution  age  after  age  of  a  higher 
and  higher  ideal  of  the  home,  for  one  thing  there  has  been 
in  Judaism  and  Christianity  a  gradual  change  in  the  atti- 
tude of  the  bridegroom,  in  ceasing  to  think  of  his  bride  as  a 
chattel,  and  entertaining  towards  her  a  romantic  love.  By 
early  custom  the  father  acted  as  to  a  son's  marriage.  At 
first  the  bride's  consent  was  not  requisite, —  the  consulta- 
tion of  Rebecca  by  her  brother  indicating  no  rule.  Yet  in 
later  custom  she  was  advised  with,  if  of  age;  if  not  of  age^ 
she  could  when  older  insist  on  divorce,  so  that  her  assent 
was  needful  in  either  case.  Marriage,  therefore,  came 
finally  to  be  contracted  through  personal  choice  alone, 
which  implied  mutual  love  as  the  basis.  At  first  it  had 
been  like  the  purchase  of  a  chattel  by  the  groom,  as  among 
barbaric  European  tribes  in  later  ages:  so  Jacob  was  said 
to  have  bought  his  wives  by  years  of  service.  In  early 
Hebrew  custom  the  law  exacted  a  payment  to  the  bride's 
father  of  not  less  than  fifty  silver  shekels.  This  was  paid 
at  betrothal,  upon  which  the  bride  at  once  made  her  home 
with  the  groom ;  the  nuptials  being  celebrated  later  at  con- 
venience within  a  time  fixed  by  law.  In  Judea  a  betrothal 
feast  was  observed.^  Little  by  little  a  change  came  about 
as  to  an  invariable  payment  of  money;  romantic  love 
appears  as  a  motive,  in  the  meager  records,  as  indeed  it 
had  been  in  the  days  of  bargaining,^ —  the  stories  of  Abra- 

'For  references  upon  customs,  vide  Gen.  24:  4;  28:  1.  Judges 
14:2.  Exodus  22:17.  Gen.  24:57;  29:18,  27,  28.  Ex.  22:16. 
Gen.  34  :  12.     Deut.  22  :  29. 

==Gen.  24:  67;     29:  18,  20.     Judges  14:  1.     I  Samuel  18:  20,  28. 


110  HOME    BUILDING. 

ham  and  Sarah,  Isaac  and  Rebecca,  Jacob  and  Rachel,  imply 
this.  The  existence  of  love  as  the  ideal  basis  of  the  con- 
jugal relation  was  implied  by  its  being  used  in  the  early 
literature  to  illustrate  the  relation  between  Jehovah  and 
his  people.^  A  striking  phrase  pertinent  to  this  point  is 
found  in  the  latest  of  the  Hebrew  prophets,  where  it  is  said 
of  "the  wife  of  thy  youth,"  that  "she  is  thy  companion, 
and  the  wife  of  thy  covenant."^  This  idea  gained  such 
sway  that  the  apostle  to  the  Gentiles  had  a  background  of 
Jewish  domestic  life  behind  him,  when  he  turned  to  the 
Colossians :  ' '  Husbands,  love  your  wives,  and  be  not  bitter 
against  them";  and  to  the  Ephesians, — "Husbands  love 
your  wives,  even  as  Christ  also  loved  the  Church,  and  gave 
himself  up  for  it  .  .  .  even  so  ought  husbands  also  to 
love  their  own  wives.  ...  He  that  loveth  his  own  wife 
loveth  himself.  ...  Do  ye  also  severally  love  each  his 
own  wife  even  as  himself."^  This  teaching  was  connected 
with  that  orderliness  in  the  conjugal  relation  so  essential  to 
the  control  of  children  in  the  house, —  there  must  be  a  head. 
Yet  the  "subjection"  of  the  wife  is  to  a  husband  who  is 
governed  by  love  to  his  wife,— "obedience"  to  a  rule  of 
love.*  It  would,  however,  be  most  unjust  and  unphilo- 
sophical  to  claim  wifely  loyalty  and  a  husband's  love  as 
solely  a  Christian  ideal.  Although  the  Brahmanical  and 
Confucian  books  put  no  small  contempt  upon  womanhood, 
and  strongly  emphasize  the  subjection  of  the  wife  to  her 
husband  and  fail  to  insist  upon  the  husband  lo^dng  his  wife 

'Deut.  7:  7.  Jeremiah  2:2;  31:  3.  This  symbol  prepared  the 
way  for  the  similitude  in  Revelation  2:4;  19  :  7;  21  :  9. 

'Malachi  2:  14. 

'Colossians  3:  19.  Ephesians  5:  25,  28,  33.  In  Edersheim's 
Jewish  Social  Life,  p.  145,  there  is  a  citation  from  the  Talmud, 
much  to  the  same  effect: — "He  that  loveth  his  wife  as  his  own 
body,  honoreth  her  more  than  his  own  body,  brings  up  his 
children  in  the  right  way,  and  leads  them  in  it  to  full  age  —  of 
him  the  Scripture  saith,  'Thou  shalt  know  that  thy  tabernacle 
shall  be  in  peace.'  " 

*Ephesians  5:  22-24,  33.    Colossians  3:  18.     I  Peter  3:  16. 


MONOGAMY.  Ill 

as  the  Master  Spirit  Jesus  Christ  loved  his  followers,  yet 
it  is  not  true  to  human  nature  at  its  highest  and  best  to 
think  of  sixty  million  homes  in  India  and  more  than  that 
in  China  as  empty  of  a  husband's  love  to  temper  the  rule 
of  his  house.  And  all  the  world  knows  that  the  early 
Christian  ideal  is  still  very  imperfectly  reached  in  a. myriad 
of  semi-Christian  homes.  Notwithstanding,  it  is  true 
beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt  that  Christendom  has  an 
ideal  of  love  between  husband  and  wife  that  has  less  prom- 
inence in  non-Christian  lands ;  and  it  is  universally  agreed 
that  marriage  without  mutual  affection  pertains  to  a  bar- 
baric or  semi-barbaric  condition,  and  that  the  children  of 
such  marriages  partake  of  the  parental  temperament  and 
characteristics.  In  its  relation  to  social  evolution,  mutual 
love  as  the  basis  of  marriage  marks  a  racial  advance  in 
two  particulars:  it  tends  to  produce  an  altruistic  type  of 
manhood ;  and  by  the  exercise  of  individual  choice  it  tends 
to  multiply  distinct  personalities,  without  which  good 
society  is  impossible. 

(2)  In  the  evolution  of  the  ideal  home  life  among  the 
Hebrews  there  was  at  an  early  period  a  fixed  custom  on 
the  part  of  no  small  number  to  imitate  Jacob  in  having 
two  wives.  And  this  was  so  to  some  extent  in  later  genera- 
tions. The  word  for  a  secondary  wife  is  common  to  all 
Semitic  languages.  Although  the  law  forbade  Jewish 
kings  to  multiply  wives,  the  injunction  was  not  heeded  by 
those  most  eminent.  As  Gideon  had  many  wives  and  sev- 
enty sons,  so  David  had  several  wives;  and  Solomon,  that 
he  might  rival  the  most  splendid  of  Oriental  monarchs,  had 
seven  hundred.  For  concubines,  the  law  seemed  to  forbid 
them;  and  a  war  captive  could  only  be  taken  for  a  wife. 
Gideon,  however,  and  David  and  Solomon  followed  patri- 
archal usage.^     Nevertheless,  the  ancient  books  represent 

^References  for  the  earlier  portion  of  this  paragraph: — Deut. 
2  :  15.  Yide  also  I  Samuel  1:2.  II  Chron.  24  :  3.  Deut.  17  :  17. 
Judges  8  :  30.  I  Chron.  3  :  1-9.  I  Kings  11  :  3.  Vide  also  II 
Kings  23  :  31.  Exodus  20  :  14.  Deut.  21  :  14.  Judges  8  :  31. 
II  Chron.  15  :  16.     I  Kings  11  :  3.     Gen.  25  :  6;  35  :  22. 


112  HOME    BUILDING. 

Adam,  Noah  and  his  sons,  Abraham  and  Isaac,  as  having 
each  but  one  wife;  and  the  Jewish  story  of  the  creation  of 
"one  answering  to"  the  man,^  for  whom  it  was  not  good 
that  he  should  be  alone,  implied  that  monogamy  accorded 
with  the  creative  purpose.  And  the  Hebrew  literature 
indicates  that  not  later  than  after  a  few  centuries,  it 
became  the  general  custom  in  Palestine  to  have  but  one 
wife,  although  polygamy  was  permitted  till  the  end  of  the 
Mosaic  economy.2  The  practical  fall  of  concubinage  and 
polygamy  so  long  before  the  Christian  era,  made  it  sub- 
sequently easy  to  establish  monogamy  not  only  as  the  fixed 
ideal  but  as  the  law  in  Christian  states.  What  the  change 
did  for  Judaism  and  for  all  the  Christian  ages,  had  been 
to  mark  in  home  building  a  distinct  advance;  promoting 
as  it  did  mutual  love  between  husband  and  wife,  greatly 
strengthening  the  woman's  personal  position  and  develop- 
ing her  individuality, —  so  affecting  favorably  her  children 
and  her  children's  children. 

(3)  The  evolution  of  the  Christian  homes  of  a  modem 
age  was  advanced  through  the  abandonment  of  that  arbi- 
trary divorce  on  the  part  of  the  husband  which  was  the 
early  Hebrew  custom,^^  but  protested  against  in  the  pro- 
phetic books,*  and  discountenanced  by  Christ  at  his  com- 
ing.^ The  founder  of  the  new  dispensation  taught  that 
marriage  was  a  sacred  Hfe-bond,  divinely  appointed,  with 
equal  rights  and  responsibilities,  dissoluble  only  through 

^Gen.  2:  18.  The  etymological  idea  is  that  of  "a  helper  match- 
ing him,  as  one  part  of  a  whole  matches  another." 

-Had  not  monogamy  been  considered  the  normal  type  these  pas- 
sages would  have  been  worded  differently: — Psalms  128:3. 
Proverbs  12:  4;  18:  22;  19:  14;  31:  10,  f.  And,  in  the  Apoc- 
rypha, Ecclesiasticus  25:  1,  18;      26:  1-14;      28:  8. 

^Deut.  24:  1.  Matt.  19:  8.  The  Mosaic  rule  was  less  rigid 
than  that  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  which  allowed  divorce  only 
upon  sufficient  cause. —  Jastrow's  ''Religion  of  Babylonia  and 
Assyria,"  p.  694. 

'Malachi  2:  14. 

=Matt.  5:  31,  32.    Mark  10:  7-12. 


GROUNDS   OF   DIVORCE.  113 

conjugal  infidelity.^  Although  Christendom  has  come  short 
of  the  ideal  of  the  Blaster,  yet  the  tie  between  husband  and 
wife  has  been  immeasurably  strengthened;  there  being  no 
arbitrary  divorce,  and  marriage  being  lield  by  law  and  cus- 
tom as  the  most  important  and  sacred  of  social  relations, 
not  to  be  entered  into  save  through  mutual  love  and  con- 
gruity  and  mutual  helpfulness,  nor  legally  annulled  but 
for  conduct  that  destroys  it. 

In  pages  preceding  reference  was  made  to  divorce  in 
Japan  and  in  ]\Ioslem  countries.  In  contrast,  the  divorces 
recorded  in  the  United  States  census  for  1890  amount  to 
one-fifth  of  one  per  cent,  of  the  population.  The  statistics 
of  1867-1886,  show  the  average  for  twenty  years  to  be  one 
divorced  person  to  every  one  hundred  and  eighty-five  mar- 
ried persons:  two-thirds  of  the  divorces  being  upon  the 
petition  of  the  wives.  The  returns  throughout  Christen- 
dom show  that  ' '  the  number  of  divorced  persons  is  so  small 
as  not  to  be  appreciable  when  considered  as  a  percentage. ' ' 
For  example,  the  per  cent,  of  divorces  to  marriages  in  Aus- 
tria, in  five  years,  1882-1886,  is  .004 ;  in  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland,  in  twenty  years,  1867-1886,  the  per  cent,  of 
divorces  to  marriages  is  .00012.- 

(4)  The    evolution    of    Christian    home    life    has   been 

*Matt.  19:  9. 

"The  family  is,  to  Jesus,  not  a  temporary  arrangement  at  the 
mercy  of  uncontrolled  temper  and  shifting  desire;  it  is  ordained 
for  that  very  discipline  in  forbearance  and  self-restraint  which. 
are  precisely  what  many  persons  would  avoid,  and  the  easy  rup- 
ture of  its  union  blights  these  virtues  in  their  bud.  Why  should 
one  concern  himself  in  marriage  to  be  considerate  and  forgiving 
if  it  is  easier  to  be  divorced  than  to  be  good?" —  Peabody's  Jesus 
Christ  and  the  Social  Question,  p.  159.     Boston,  1900. 

The  principles  which  underlie  domestic  stability  are  alluded  to 
by  Professor  Peabody  in  his  work,  pp.  173-5,  181-2. 

^Authorities:  "Special  Report  of  the  United  States  Bureau  of 
Labor  on  Marriage  and  Divorce,''  1889;  Article  by  Carroll  D. 
"Wright  in  the  Forum  (Vol.  17)  for  June,  1894;  and  Wright's 
"Outline  of  Practical  Sociology,''  p.  166.     New  York,  1899. 

8 


114  HOME    BUILDING. 

favored  by  an  ideal  of  domestic  purity.'^  The  post-exile 
Hebrews  represented  marriages  as  made  in  Heaven;  and 
that  God  dwelt  in  a  pure  and  loving  home.  In  Greece  and 
Rome  the  highest  circles  of  pagan  society  never  set  aside  a 
woman  upon  the  ground  of  immorality,  Aspasia's  remark- 
able career  did  not  apparently  suffer  through  moral  con- 
siderations ;  the  great  men  of  Greece  deemed  it  no  discredit 
to  associate  Avith  her.  This,  in  a  sentence,  speaks  volumes 
concerning  the  home  life  of  the  most  brilliant  period  of 
Greek  history.-  Incredible  as  it  appears  to  the  moral  sense 
of  modern  Christendom,  it  is  true  that  the  worst  vices  con- 
demned in  the  New  Testament  were  so  common  as  to  excite 
scarcely  the  notice  of  the  pagan  moralists,  Greek  or  Roman. 
Words  once  in  ordinary  use  have  now  perished  from  human 
tongue  and  ear  and  memory.  The  ideas  are  detected  ety- 
mologically.  It  is  scarcely  possible  to  exaggerate  the  lewd- 
ness of  life  which  characterized  Roman  society  at  its  best. 
If  sober  historians  have  told  but  half  the  truth,  the  vices 
of  the  worst  wards  in  our  great  modern  cities^  would  have 
excited  little  notice  among  the  millions  who  dwelt  in 
Rome, —  which,  however,  was  less  infamous  than  certain 
cities  in  the  provinces.  No  thoughtful  person  can  read 
such  facts,  first  in  one  historian,  then  in  another,  and  exam- 
ine as  best  he  may  the  early  authorities,  and  compare  the 
old  with  the  new,  wdthout  reaching    the    conclusion  that 

^Ex.  20:  14,  17.  Lev.  20:  10-19.  Matt.  5:  27,  28.  I  Cor.  . . :  15, 
16,  18.     II  Tim.  2:  20-22. 

-Compare  Galton's  Hereditary  Genius,  p.  343. 

*As  to  the  existence  of  the  social  e.y\\,vicle  Chap.  VIII,  in^ra  — 
upon  the  nominal  conversion  of  Europe  —  for  the  explanation  of 
the  abiding  of  a  vast  camp  of  unregenerate  men  to  this  day  in 
Christendom;  the  religious  statistics  of  every  "Christian"  coun- 
try showing  that  great  bodies  of  people  are  not  in  v/orking  sym- 
pathy with  the  Church  nor  affiliated  with  it. 

The  social  evil  in  Christendom  is  not  chargeable  to  essential 
Christianity,  but  to  the  want  of  it.  So,  by  parity  of  reasoning, 
the  domestic  immorality  of  Japan  {vide  supra)  is  not  chargeable 
to  Gautama,  but  to  the  want  of  that  purity  of  life  which  he  exem- 
plified and  inculcated. 


woman's  INDIVIDU.VLITY.  115 

Jesus  Christ  opened  a  new  moral  era  for  mankind.  The 
ideal  of  Christendom  was  fixed  by  the  words  of  Jesus,  the 
thought  of  Jesus,  in  respect  to  the  sanctity  of  the  marriage 
relation  and  purity  of  life,  and  by  the  apostolic  New  Testa- 
ment words  relating  to  the  divine  indwelling  —  the  body 
as  the  temple  of  the  Holy  Spirit  which  is  not  to  be  defiled.^ 

(5)  The  evolution  of  the  Christian  home  has  been 
favored  by  the  development  of  woman's  individuality 
through  her  increased  sharing  of  the  rights  and  responsi- 
bilities of  social  and  domestic  life. 

To  the  Hebrew  mind,  woman's  equality  as  man's  com- 
panion was  implied  by  the  terms  used :  Ish  man ;  Ishah, 
woman.  Among  the  HebrcAvs  there  is  no  ancient  trace  of 
woman's  isolation.  In  the  simplicity  of  patriarchal  life 
she  was  not  shut  off  from  the  world  of  men.-  Her  indi- 
viduality of  character  was  recognized  and  trusted  by  domes- 
tic usage  before  the  era  of  states  and  legislators.  Not  only 
attending  the  synagogue  service,  she  always  bore  as  prom- 
inent a  part  in  public  rejoicings  as  in  domestic  festivals: 
virtuous  women  moving  freely  in  mixed  companies.^  The 
Babylonian,  Assyrian  and  Phoenician  religions,  as  well  as 
the  Jewish,  gave  to  woman  a  prominent  place.*  In  the 
home  the  mother  was  always  held  in  equal  regard  with  the 
father.^     Girlhood  was  honored:  it  was  common  usage  to 

'Matt.  5:  28,  31,  32;     19:  3-9.     I  Cor.  6:  15-19. 

=Gen.  24:  15-25;  29:  1-14.  I  Sam.  9:  11.  Ex.  2:  IG;  21:  22. 
I  Sam.  9:  11.     II  Sam.  20:  16. 

'Ex.  15:  20.  Deut.  16:  11,  14;  25:  11;  31:  12.  Judges  16:  27. 
Ruth  2  :  5  f.  I  Sam.  18  :  6,  7.  Matt.  9  :  20;  12  :  46;  26  :  7. 
Luke  2:  41-8;     10:38-42.     John  2:  1;     4:7. 

*Jastrow's  '"Religions  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria"  affirms,  p.  694, 
that  —  milleniums  ago  —  the  position  of  the  women  of  the  Orient 
before  the  courts  was  not  different  from  that  of  the  male  popu- 
lation, and  that  women  could  by  law  hold  property  and  dispose 
of  it.  This  makes  it  easy  to  see  that  the  environment  of  the 
Hebrews,  as  well  as  their  own  desert  training,  led  them  to  con- 
sider women  as  socially  man's  equal. 

=Ex.  20:  12.  Lev.  19:  3;  20:9.  Deut.  21:  18-21;  27:16.  Matt. 
5:4.     Col.  3:  20. 


116  HOME    BUILDING. 

speak  of  the  Jewish  people  as  the  daughter  of  Jehovah^ 
"the  daughter  of  Jerusalem,"  "the  daughter  of  Judah," 
"the  daughter  of  Zion."  If  sons  were  the  legal  heirs, 
their  sisters  were  to  be  maintained  by  them,  and  each 
endowed  for  her  marriage.^  Jesus,  the  Christ,  as  the  Son 
of  Man,  stood  for  woman  as  well  as  man,  his  bearing  always 
indicating  a  tender  respect,  holding  her  in  spiritual  kin- 
ship, with  equal  honor:  "Whosoever  shall  do  the  will  of 
my  Father  which  is  in  Heaven,  the  same  is  my  brother,  and 
sister  and  mother."-  To  honor  womanhood  as  much  as 
manhood  was  a  Jewish  custom  older  than  the  Mosaic  law; 
it  blazes  out  in  the  historical  books ;  it  illuminates  Hebrew 
poetry ;  it  glows  in  the  record  of  the  founding  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church  — the  Acts,  the  Epistles,  the  Revelation. 
From  the  first  to  the  last,  there  was  an  equality  in  religious 
privileges,  and  in  the  exercise  of  spiritual  gifts.^ 

The  New  Testament  put  w^oman  upon  the  same  plane 
with  man,  his  equal ;  the  woman  and  the  man,  each  supply- 
ing the  deficiences  of  the  other.  Christianity  did  a  new 
thing  in  the  world,  says  President  Woolsey,  by  exalting 
the  passive  or  feminine  virtues,  by  widening  the  idea  of 

^Edersheim's  Jewish  Social  Life,  p.  149. 

=Matt.  12:  50. 
'Gen.    16:  7.     Num.    6:2;      12:  2    .and     Mic.     6:  4.     Deut.     12:  12 
Judges    4:4,    5;    13  :  20;     21  :  16-25.     I    Sam.    9    f.     II    Kings, 
22:  13-20.     Neh.  8:  2,  3;     12:  4,  3.     Acts  1:  14;     2:  17,  18;     9:  36; 
16  :  14;  18  :  26.     Rom.  16  :  1.     Phil.  4  :  3. 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  Hebraic  and  Christian  thought  and 
usage  has  been  for  nearly  four  score  generations  diametrically 
opposed  to  Brahmanical  requirements,  and,  in  the  main,  Moslem 
custom, —  which  accounts  for  the  difference  in  the  present  atti- 
tude of  these  great  religions  toward  womanhood. 

It  is  pertinent  here  to  refer,  also,  to  certain  passages  Relating 
to  tne  Humane  Treatment  of  Widows: — Exodus  22:22.  Deut. 
10:  18;  14:  29;  16:  11,  14;  24:  17,  19-21;  26:  12,  13;  27:  19." 
Job  29:  13;  31:  16.  Psalms  68:  5;  146:  9.  Isa.  1:  17,  23.  Jer. 
7:  6;  22:  3.  Zach.  7:  10.  Mai.  3:  5.  Matt.  23:  14.  I  Cor.  7:  39. 
I  Tim.  5:  16.  James  1:  27.  The  ideal,  the  customs,  and  the  legis- 
lation of  Christendom  have  been  profoundly  influenced  by  these 
texts. 


woman's  individuality.  117 

perfection,  so  that  not  masculine  character  but  female 
excellencies  also  came  to  be  admired.^  And  the  awakening 
power  of  far  reaching  religious  truth  is  felt,  unfolding  the 
power  of  thoughtful  womanhood.  By  women  of  the  Patris- 
tic church  who  received  the  crown  of  martyrdom,  the  dig- 
nity which  had  been  conferred  upon  Oriental  womanhood 
by  eminent  names  enrolled  in  Hebrew  history,  or  immor- 
talized in  the  records  of  the  Christian  era,  was  made  the 
more  illustrious.  And  early  in  the  Koman  Church  certain 
women  widely  renowned  for  their  munificent  charities  were 
honored  by  spectacular  funereal  trains  that  recalled  the 
fading  memory  of  pagan  pageantry.  Nor  is  it  unsuitable 
to  note,  as  an  influence  tending  to  dignify  domestic  life, 
that,  in  the  so-called  "conversion"  of  Northern  Europe, 
the  effigies  of  holy  women  were  offered  to  the  barbarians  to 
worship  as  saints,  and  the  barbaric  mind  deemed  them 
worthy  of  spiritual  leadership.  The  honor,  too,  bestowed 
by  the  papal  power  upon  the  mother  of  our  Lord  —  the 
adoration  of  feminine  holiness  —  had  no  small  effect  in 
moving  both  the  sunny  South  and  the  savage  North  to 
appreciate  womanly  worth. 

Yet  in  the  evolution  of  a  higher  type  of  individual 
womanhood  in  Christendom,  one  of  the  most  potent  influ- 
ences was  that  of  the  pagan  women  of  Germany  when 
Christianized;  women  providentially  fitted  to  become  the 
mothers  of  that  new  racial  Christian  stock,  the  Teutonic, 
which  so  soon  came  forward  to  take  a  great  part  in  Euro- 
pean civ^ization,  and  to  exert  a  world-wide  influence  in 
later  centuries.  In  the  time  of  Tacitus,  monogamy  was 
almost  universal  in  Germany;  and  a  worthy  woman  was 
the  companion  of  her  husband's  dangers,  a  source  of  inspi- 
ration, an  on-leader  sacred  and  prophetic,  bringing  to  him 
the  gift  of  arms,  and  arousing  martial  courage  in  the  hour 
of  battle.  And  as  to  the  purity  of  their  women,  no  other 
savage  tribes  were  comparable  with  the  early  Germans. 
No  one  in  Germany  laughed  at  vice,  says  the  historian,- 

^New  Englander,  XIX,  p.  880. 
*De  Germania. 


118  HOME   BUILDING. 

nor  did  they  call  it  the  fashion  to  corrupt  and  to  be  cor- 
rupted. When  this  virile  race  became  Christian,  the  pris- 
tine Hebrew  appreciation  of  the  value  and  dignity  of 
womanhood,  and  the  early  Christian  customs  and  ideals, 
were  reinforced  by  the  ancient  German  reverence  for 
women,  and  thereafter  we  find  womanhood  advancing  to 
occupy  the  position  of  respect  in  which  the  wives  and 
mothers,  the  sisters  and  daughters,  of  Christendom  are 
held  to-day. 

Throughout  the  entire  feudal  period  there  was  a  distinct 
upward  movement  in  what  was  most  honorable  in  woman- 
hood, when  compared  with  the  rioting  and  relatively  lawless 
generations  that  had  followed  the  fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire.  The  part  taken  by  w^omen  in  Central  Europe  in 
the  practical  management  of  affairs  at  this  time,  was 
matched  by  no  precedent  in  the  classic  lands  of  the  South. 

The  knights  of  chivalry,  too,  for  some  three  hundred 
years,  from  the  eleventh  to  the  fourteenth  century,  included 
most  of  the  young  men  at  arms  in  the  upper  classes  of 
Europe;  and  they  permanently  improved  the  morals  and 
manners  of  all  subsequent  generations  in  their  relation  to 
womanhood.  In  the  spirit  of  the  Eastern  crusaders,  the 
youth  who  constituted  the  flower  of  nobility  consecrated 
themselves  in  Christian  churches  to  lives  of  danger  and  of 
devotion  to  an  ideal.  Well-balanced  young  men,  of  high 
social  rank,  relying  upon  supernatural  guidance,  became 
pledge-keepers  and  friends  of  the  friendless,  and  they 
entertained  an  unselfish  and  pure-minded  consideration  for 
virtuous  women.  This  Christo-militant  influence  —  the 
Christianity  of  crusaders  and  warriors  —  of  converted 
Gauls  and  Germans  —  steadfastly  exercised  during  ten 
generations,  when  connected  with  the  constant  uplift  in 
the  position  of  women  during  more  than  seventy-five  ante- 
rior generations,  Hebrew  and  Christian,  elevated  woman- 
hood to  an  honored  position  never  before  enjoyed ;  and  this 
movement  —  so  unique  in  the  world's  history  —  has  pro- 
foundly affected  the  modern  age,  preparing  the  way  for 


ENGLAND.  119 

that  chivalric  sentiment  toward  women  so  characteristic  of 
Christendom  when  contrasted  with  all  the  non-Christian 
portions  of  the  giobe.^ 

Yet  the  early  Germans  bought  their  wives,  and  they  had 
power  to  sell  them,  beat  them,  or  kill  them ;  and  much  that 
was  unehivalric  and  essentially  barbaric  became  a  part  of 
the  common  law  as  applied  to  women  in  Germanic  England, 
under  which  the  wife  had  no  legal  individual  existence,  her 
personality  being  merged  in  that  of  her  husband ;  the  law 
too  recognizing  wrongs  as  to  her  property  rights,  that  have 
been  finally  so  rectified  by  legislation  and  rulings  in  equity 
that  there  is  now  equality  of  rights.  Through  insular  life, 
the  early  composite  racial  stock  of  Great  Britain  has  prob- 
ably been  more  purely  kept  during  the  last  twenty-five  gen- 
erations than  any  national  stock  on  the  European  continent 
where  there  have  been  more  international  marriages ;  this  — 
together  with  certain  social  and  religious  unifying  influ- 
ences —  has  produced  a  homegeneous  body  of  women  who 
have  in  recent  years  exercised  a  great  influence  upon  poli- 
tics, and  in  the  great  colonies  of  the  South  Pacific  they 
have  acquired  the  full  right  of  suffrage.  This  has  so 
favored  the  development  of  the  English  woman's  individ- 
uality, that  it  cannot  fail  to  exercise  ultimately  a  powerful 
influence  upon  womanhood  in  the  nationalities  of  the  Teu- 
tonic stock. 

Throughout  large  areas  of  Christendom  not  only  are  the 
property  rights  of  women  fully  protected,  but  there  is  an 
approach  to  an  ideal  condition  of  equality  of  personal, 
domestic,  and  social  responsibilities  and  privileges,  with  the 
fullest  liberty  for  the  development  of  capacities,  and  for 
moral  leadership  and  inspiration.  Tliis  evolution  of  indi- 
vidual independence  which  has  made  good  society  possible, 
has  made  possible  the  highest  type  of  homes  in  the  world. 
If  it  be  a  truism  that  mankind  is  feminine  as  well  as  mas- 

*The  songs  of  the  Troubadours,  during  eight  or  ten  generations, 
must,  too,  be  reckoned  with  as  a  sociological  influence  of  no  mean 
order  in  its  relation  to  the  modern  status  of  womanhood. 


120  HOME   BUILDING. 

culine,  womanly  as  well  as  manly,  has  it  not  required  many 
ages  and  high  courage  to  finally  recognize  the  duality  of  the 
race  in  the  home,  in  law,  in  social  custom  ?  China  does  not 
see  it ;  India  has  not  the  knowledge  of  it ;  it  is  unknown  to 
Turkey,  and  to  multitudinous  millions  in  rude  parts  of  the 
world.  Yet,  unless  woman  is  man's  match,  God  made  a 
mistake  in  the  creation.  The  world  needs  the  divinely 
appointed  scheme  for  perfecting  the  race, —  a  well-devel- 
oped womanhood.  The  regeneration  of  man  must  be 
wrought  out  in  the  home  life,  or  it  never  will  be. 

(6)  As  a  study  in  certain  elementary  principles  of  sociol- 
ogy in  their  relation  to  home  life,  suppose  there  be  made  a 
comparison  of  the  world's  sacred  books  in  their  relation  to 
womanhood,  and  of  the  domestic  history  of  Hindus,  Bud- 
dhists, Chinese,  Mussulmans,  and  Christians,  and  it  will  be 
seen  at  once  what  races  and  religions  are  most  likely,  in 
competition,  to  survive  as  the  fittest, —  those  most  rapidly 
forging  ahead  through  producing  a  superior  racial  stock. 

We  have  found  in  Judaism  and  Christianity  the  develop- 
ment of  mutual  respect,  mutual  love,  and  equality  in  com- 
panionship between  husband  and  wife;  the  abolition  of 
polygamy  and  concubinage;  the  diminishing  of  impurity; 
the  strengthening  of  the  marriage  tie  to  give  it  more  per- 
manence; and,  above  all,  the  evolution  of  w^oman's  individ- 
uality through  equality  of  social  and  domestic  rights  and 
responsibilities ; —  and  all  these  have  during  the  past  exer- 
cised a  most  powerful  influence  upon  breeding, —  there 
being  the  cumulative  force  of  nearly  a  hundred  generations 
of  a  steadily  advancing  condition,  as  contrasted  with  the 
relatively  stationary  status  of  Asiatic  womanhood  age  after 
age.  Let  this  be  continued  for  ages  to  come,  and  through 
the  application  of  the  ordinary  principles  of  heredity,  it  is 
this  that  will  be  most  potent  and  permanent  as  an  influence 
upon  the  future  of  mankind, —  efi'ecting  racial  changes 
through  Christianized  homes. 

(7)  Not  only  does  the  summary  of  the  foregoing  facts 
have  a  bearing  upon  racial  stock,  but  there  are  two  other 


MATURITY   IN  MOTHERHOOD.  121 

facts  that  directly  affect  the  principle  of  superior  breeding. 

One  is  that  of  the  age  at  marriage.  By  Hebrew  and 
Christian  custom  during  at  least  four  score  generations, 
youth  have  been  wedded  at  a  more  mature  age  than  among 
peoples  where  child-marriage  has  been  the  immemorial  cus- 
tom :  this  has  favored  the  hereditary  transmission  of  a  more 
mature  mental  character  and  the  formation  of  a  physically 
strong  racial  stock.  Child-marriage,  too,  in  non-Christian 
lands  has  been  commonly  connected  with  infantile  betrothals, 
^\'ithout  that  mutual  acquaintance  for  personal  choice  and 
bridal  consent  which  custom  has  given  to  Hebrew  and 
Christian  unions  for  thousands  of  years :  from  a  purely  sci- 
entific point  of  view  this  must,  upon  well  settled  and  widely 
known  principles  of  heredity,  make  a  radical  difference  in 
the  intelligence  and  personal  independence  of  the  progeny. 

And  in  regard  to  both  child-marriage  and  infantile 
betrothal  as  contrasted  with  more  mature  wedlock  and 
betrothal  through  choice  and  mutual  love,  the  mere  contin- 
uance of  these  processes  in  the  past  during  so  many 
scores  of  generations  —  all  the  time  creating  a  wider  and 
wider  divergence  in  the  stock  propagated  through  the  con- 
trasted customs  —  must  in  some  measure  account  for  the 
difference, —  as  to  maturity  of  character,  intelligence,  and 
personal  independence, —  between  Christian  and  non-Chris- 
tian lands.  And  upon  scientific  principles,  the  great 
momentum  already  acquired,  by  ages  after  ages  of  diverg- 
ence, will  still  more  in  the  future  differentiate  these  races. 
Upon  the  vantage  ground  of  heredity,  the  Christian  stock 
has  acquired,  over  the  stock  produced  by  early  marriage  and 
infantile  betrothal,  certain  leadership  in  maturity  of  char- 
acter, independence  and  intelligence,  that  can  never  be 
over-reached  in  the  race  for  filial  supremacy. 

If  a  colt  is  more  mature  at  two  years  than  a  child  at 
twelve,  and  at  four  years  than  the  average  youth  at  twenty, 
then  the  prolongation  of  pupilage  —  as  well  as  of  infancy  — 
pertains  to  man.  To  prolong  pupilage  marks  that  civiliza- 
tion which  is  at  the  greatest  remove  from  primeval  eondi- 


122  HOME   BUILDING. 

tion.  Is  not  child-marriage,  throughout  great  areas  of  Asia, 
but  one  custom  of  many,  one  idea  of  many,  that  pertains 
to  semi-pristine  condition  ?  Ought  not  well-developed  intel- 
lectual and  moral  qualities  and  a  certain  maturity  of  char- 
acter to  be  the  gift  of  parents  to  their  children  by  heredity 
as  well  as  by  training?  Are  children  fit  to  propagate  a 
superior  race  ?  Will  not  India,  Burmah,  Siam,  China,  and 
the  Mohammedan  countries  improve  their  stock  of  men  and 
women,  if  they  so  change  their  customs  as  to  defer  mar- 
riage, and  give  more  extended  schooling  to  the  parents  of 
the  next  generation  ?  It  is  a  question  of  transmitting  char- 
acter by  heredity.^  If  it  be  a  matter  of  selection  and  sur- 
vival, will  it  not  be  worth  the  while  for  sociological  students 
in  Asia  to  consider  the  policy  of  keeping  young  men  and 
maidens  long  at  school  or  in  learning  the  arts  of  livelihood, 
and  deferring  their  marriage  to  years  of  maturity  ? 

Another  fact  that  makes  a  difference  between  Christian 
and  non-Christian  homes  as  to  the  improvement  of  racial 
stock,  is  that  of  the  early  abandonment  of  the  patriarchal 
family  system  by  the  Hebrews,  and  its  never  being  adopted 
by  European  Christians,  while  it  has  been  adhered  to  in 
Asia  from  age  to  age  until  this  early  family  type  numbers 
a  present  population  of  more  than  six  hundred  millions  in 
India  and  China.  The  Hebraic  mandate  was  this:  "There- 
fore shall  a  man  leave  father  and  mother,  and  shall  cleave 
to  his  wife."^  Upon  this  principle  the  Jewish  and  Chris- 
tian ideal  for  nearlj^  three  thousand  years  has  been  that  of 
a  home  in  which  the  most  important  relation  is  the  bond 
between  husband  and  wife ;  but  in  Eastern  Asia  from  imme- 
morial ages  until  now,  the  principal  bond  is  between  father 

Wide  Journal  of  the  Royal  Statistical  Society,  June,  1890.  for 
a  paper  by  Doctor  Ogle  upon  the  late  marriages  of  professional 
men.  A  curious  list  was  published  many  years  ago  in  America, 
based  on  the  theory  that  mature  parentage  favors  the  youngest 
sons.  In  it  the  present  writer  found  many  eminent  names; 
among  them  Benjamin  Franklin,  the  youngest  child  of  the 
youngest  child  of  five  generations. 

-Gen.  2:  24.     Matt.  19:  5.     Mark  10:  7.     Ephesians  5:  31. 


SEPARATE   HOMES  AND   IMPROVED   STOCK.  123 

and  son.  That  soon  after  the  Israelites  ceased  to  dwell  in 
teuts,  the  common  Palestinian  home  was  separate  for  each 
husband  and  wife^  is  indicated  by  the  legislation  upon  the 
parental  instruction  and  training  of  children,  the  Mosaic 
theory  of  domestic  discipline,  the  phraseology  of  Hebrew 
poets  and  prophets,  the  usage  in  village  building,  and  per- 
tinent points  in  rabbinical  law.  This  gave  parents  an. 
opportunity  to  impress  their  own  personality  upon  child 
life,  for  mothers  to  minister  in  love,  to  promote  kindness- 
of  disposition  and  gentleness,  to  secure  obedience  to  an 
ideal  of  conduct.  That  childhood  should  be  shaped  by  the 
parents  —  and  not  by  the  grandparents  and  uncles  and 
aunts  and  cousins  all  in  one  family  —  was  the  Hebraic 
ideal.  This  is  apparent  from  the  precepts  that  relate  to 
the  responsibility  of  children  to  their  parents.- 

(8)  If  not  in  exact  details  as  above,  yet  in  some  such  way 
as  this,  individual  home  life  came  in  the  long  process  of  ages 
to  be  the  most  efficient  factor  in  the  social  evolution  of 
Europe.  Christianity,  through  Hebrew  thought  and  hered- 
ity, proceeded  upon  the  theory  that  the  propagation  of  the 
race  should  be  only  through  regularly  constituted  families, 
that  none  might  be  born  into  the  w^orld  unless  in  a  way  ta 
secure  intelligent  moral  training  throughout  a  prolonged 
infancy  :^  so  it  separated  itself  from  the  domestic  ideals  of 
Greece  and  Rome.  Had  the  classic  models  been  followed, 
there  would  have  been  a  difference  toto  codo  in  the  concep- 
tion of  the  value  of  child  life.* 

'The  married  son  was  enrolled  as  part  of  his  father's  family, 
but  not  necessarily  as  part  of  his  household. 

'Exodus  20:  12.  Lev.  19:  3;  29:  9.  Deut.  21:  18-21;  27:  16, 
Matt.  15  :  4.     Col.  3  :  20. 

'Consult  John  Fiske's  Outline  of  Cosmic  PMlosophxj.  Vol.  II, 
pp.  340-344;  360-369.     Boston,  1875. 

*Upon  the  abandonment  of  children  or  their  destruction,  vide 
Jowett's  Plato,  III,  p.  341.  Oxford,  1875;  Aristotle's  PoUt,  VII, 
14,  10;  Quintillian  Dec.  306,  VI;  Seneca  De  Ira,  I,  15.  Upon 
the  other  hand,  there  is  no  trace  of  infanticide  in  the  Hebrew 
records.  Consult  Jewish  and  German  customs  in  Tacitus  Hist. 
V,  5;  De  Germania  XIX. 


124  HOME   BUILDING. 

There  were  no  children  in  Greek  art,  says  Ruskin.  The 
world's  ideal  has  changed.  It  has  been  changed  by  the 
Christ-child.  The  great  religions  that  sprang  up  in  South- 
ern Europe,  Southern  and  Central  Asia,  or  amid  the  sands 
of  Arabia  bestowed  no  such  honor  upon  childhood  as  that 
religion  which  was  founded  among  the  Hebrews  by  the 
Babe  of  Bethlehem,  That  Jesus  blessed  the  children  could 
never  be  forgotten  by  the  Christian  Church,  which  has  con- 
secrated its  cradles  to  God  as  truly  as  its  cathedrals. 
Through  tendencies  transmitted  from  parents  to  children 
for  more  than  three  score  and  ten  generations,  the  altru- 
istic sentiment,  kindness  of  disposition,  a  mother's  gentle- 
ness, self-control,  habits  of  obedience  and  respect  for  law, 
have  become  great  powers  today  in  the  social  life  of 
Christendom. 


CHAPTER    FOUR:     CONTRASTS    IN    EDUCATION.* 

I. 

Among  the  ancient  Hebrews  prior  to  the  exile,  the  youth 
of  the  foremost  families  so  far  received  domestic  or  private 
instruction  as  to  observe  the  early  precept  requiring  it ;  and, 
after  the  exile,  village  schools  were  commonly  but  not  uni- 
versally held  in  the  synagogues.  Children  Avere  kept  at 
school  from  three  to  five  years  and  advanced  pupils  for  nine 
or  ten.  Teachers  were  paid  by  voluntary  contributions ;  not 
by  fees,  less  instruction  be  limited  to  the  wealthy.  Whoever 
could  not  read  was  not  counted  as  a  true  son  of  Israel  f  and 
it  was  the  boast  of  the  Talmud,  that,  in  the  time  of  Heze- 
kiah,  not  one  unlettered  person  could  be  found  by  a  search 
from  Dan  to  Beersheba.  Nearly  five  hundred  schools  were 
reported  at  Jerusalem  at  the  time  of  its  fall.  The  course 
of  instruction  w^as  kept  to  the  sacred  books  of  Israel,  and 
works  of  the  rabbis:  its  effect  being  to  intensify  national 
characteristics,  and  so  exalt  the  law  that  rabbinical  energy 
finally  expended  itself  in  hair-splitting  casuistry  not  unlike 
that  of  European  schoolmen  in  a  lated  age. 

In  the  grafting  of  Hebrew  thought,  the  Messianic  hope 
and  its  fulfilment,  upon  Gentile  stock,  the  schooling  of 
children  could  not  be  transferred  in  the  disturbed  domestic 
and  social  life  —  the  antagonisms  and  perils  by  which  a 
pagan  empire  confronted  the  new  faith.  For  fifteen  hun- 
dred years  we  hear  of  only  spasmodic  attempts  to  effect 
that  upon  a  great  scale,  in  changed  conditions,  which  had 

4n  treating  of  education,  it  is  assumed  that  this  term  com- 
prises all  that  series  of  instruction  which  is  intended  to  so  dis- 
cipline the  understanding,  correct  and  form  the  habits,  as  to  fit 
those  who  are  taught,  in  character  and  will,  for  complete  living 
and  for  social  usefulness. 

=Deut.  6:  7.  Judges  8:  14.  Isa.  8:  1;'  10:  19.  Proverbs  10:  1; 
17:25;     23:24.     Ecces.   5 :  13  ;     51:28. 


126  EARLY  CHRISTIAN  EDUCATION. 

been  early  aeliieved  in  Palestine.  Greece  and  Rome  had 
never  taught  the  common  people.  The  training  of  youth 
for  public  life  made  academies  needful,  and  of  these  the 
Church  Fathers  availed  themselves.  The  Emperor  Julian 
forbade  Christians  to  teach  the  Greek  classics,  saying  that 
they  might  expound  Matthew  and  Luke : — ' '  Keep  to  your 
ignorance,  eloquence  is  ours;  the  followers  of  the  fishermen 
bave  no  claim  to  culture. ' '  There  were,  says  Guizot,  Chris- 
tian primary  schools  in  the  fourth  century.  Too  much  occu- 
pied was  the  Roman  Primate  in  manipulating  temporal 
Jiingdoms  to  give  a  thought  to  the  empire  of  child  life. 
Gregory  the  Great  rebuked  the  teaching  of  grammar,  as 
unworthy  a  prelate.  Individual  popes,  however,  thought 
otherwise:  Sylvester  II  introducing  Arabic  numbers  to 
Europe;  and  Clement  V  directing  that  monks  should  be 
taught  the  Oriental  tongues.  Town  and  village  schools 
were  opened  by  Charlemagne  in  every  monastery  for 
psalms,  arithmetic,  grammar,  and  the  copying  of  holy 
books:  great  pride  took  the  emperor  in  his  Saxon  schools, 
where  he  berated  the  sons  of  nobility  for  their  indolence. 
Man  of  war  that  he  was,  he  gathered  up  the  heroic  poetry 
of  the  conquered  peoples,  but  his  son  burned  his  manu- 
scripts for  rubbish.  The  synod  of  Orleans,  and  the  Council 
of  Chalons,  directed  the  priests  to  open  free  elementary 
schools,  and  the  bishops  to  maintain  instruction  in  literature 
as  well  as  in  the  Scriptures.  The  Council  at  Rome  in  A.  D. 
826  authorized  town  and  village  schools,  and  a  Council  in 
A.  D.  1179  appointed  a  master  for  instructing  the  poor  in 
every  cathedral  Church.  For  eight  or  nine  hundred  years 
the  classics  were  copied  in  many  monasteries,  until  the 
revival  of  learning.  The  education  maintained  by  monks 
and  schoolmen  accomplished  little  for  the  conunon  people. 
The  universities  of  Paris  and  Oxford  and  Cambridge  were 
founded  by  the  Church  for  the  Church. 

With  the  dawn  of  the  reformation,  the  discovery  of  print- 
ing and  the  multiplication  of  Bibles,  began  in  Christendom 
the    modern    development    of    popular    education.     John 


IN    THE   REFORMED    CHURCH.  127 

Stuart  Mill  uncovers  the  motive  of  Christianity  in  the  mod- 
ern age  in  all  latitudes,  when  he  says  that,  historically,  the 
education  of  the  poorest  of  the  people  has  been  based  on  the 
Protestant  theory  that  every  man  is  held  to  be  answerable 
immediately  to  God  for  his  conduct,  so  that  he  must  be  in 
position  to  inform  himself.^  The  foundation  of  the  modern 
German  system  was  laid  by  Luther  and  Melanchthon;  the 
latter  giving  much  time  to  the  preparation  of  text-books. 
The  ablest  teachers  in  Europe  in  the  sixteenth  century  were 
the  Jesuits ;  nor  could  they  be  surpassed.  On  the  continent 
the  Thirty  Years  War  greatly  hindered  popular  education. 
Parish  schools  flourished  in  Scotland,  but  they  were  not  free 
or  universal.  The  opening  of  the  New  World  by  English 
settlers  opened  a  new  educational  era  for  the  average  man ;  • 
Hartford  establishing  the  first  town  school,  and  Massachu- 
setts the  first  free  schools  throughout  the  state.  The 
schools  were  of  a  low  grade,  being  what  the  people  agreed  to 
liave  by  their  own  vote;  it  was,  however,  the  glory  of  the 
era  that  they  could  vote,  and  that  they  made  the  rudiments 
of  education  as  free  as  the  air  to  every  child  in  the  land. 
Christendom  has,  however,  been  slow  to  make  even  ele- 
mentary education  universal.  In  England  at  the  time  of 
the  American  Revolution,  not  one  in  twenty  of  the  people 
of  the  agricultural  districts  could  read  or  write.  In  1851, 
three  men  out  of  every  ten  married  in  England  signed  the 
register  with  a  mark  only ;  and  there  were  nearly  a  million 
children  in  England  and  Wales  between  the  ages  of  five  and 
twelve  out  of  school  that  year.  The  American  Common 
School  system  as  it  is  to-day  is  the  growth  of  hardly  two 
generations.  What  was  once  the  privilege  of  the  few  has 
now  become  the  right  of  all.  Great  masses  of  people  have 
come  to  know  that  general  mental  culture  is  for  the  advan- 
tage of  the  state, —  "that  the  learning  of  the  few  is  despo- 
tism, that  the  learning  of  the  multitude  is  liberty,  that  an 
intelligent  and  principled  liberty  is  fame,  wisdom,  and 
power."  In  Australia  to-day  the  graded  schools  retain 
^Essay  on  Comte,  pp.  112,  113 


128  MODERN  EDUCATION. 

their  pupils  till  more  than  fourteen  and  a  half  years  old, 
and  one  pupil  in  fifteen  till  seventeen  years  old,  then  one  in 
every  one  hundred  and  sixty  has  four  years  more  at  the 
university. 

In  the  United  States  more  than  seventeen  millions  of 
pupils  are  now  receiving  free  public  schooling,  each  during^ 
an  average  period  of  forty-four  months ;  and  this  is  made  up 
to  an  average  of  fifty  months  through  private  and  collegiate 
instruction/  And  so  evenly  is  this  distributed  that  the  dif- 
ference between  the  girls  and  boys  enrolled  is  less  than  one 
per  cent. ;  and  twenty-seven  per  cent,  of  the  students  in  uni- 
versities and  colleges  are  women.  By  the  public  system  the 
destitute  are  schooled  at  the  expense  of  the  wealthy.  It  is  a 
daily  process,  during  an  average  of  seven  months  of  the 
year,  carried  on  in  nearly  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
buildings  —  costing  five  hundred  and  seventy-five  millions- 
of  dollars  —  dedicated  to  school  use,  each  like  a  factory  for 
the  manufacture  of  character.  It  is  a  kind  of  industry 
which  dwarfs  everything  else.  More  than  two  hundred  and 
twenty-five  million  dollars  a  year  are  spent  upon  it.  There 
are  four  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  teachers  —  in  number 
far  outranking  all  other  liberal  callings  in  the  land, —  who 
are  carrying  out  the  policy  of  the  state  to  assimilate  and 
nationalize  the  peoples  of  diverse  tongues  and  races,  which, 
in  different  stages  of  civilization,  are  so  continuously  trans- 
ferred to  our  shores  from  other  lands,^  and  fitting  our  people 
at  large  to  gain  an  increasing  influence  in  the  affairs  of  the 
globe.  It  is  impossible,  w^hen  this  vast  machinery  is  once 
set  to  running  upon  a  continent,  to  stop  it.  It  creates  that 
public  sentiment  which  gives  to  it  a  greater  and  greater- 
power. 

Much  might  be  added  to  the  same  effect,  as  to  the  ideal 
and  the  notable  achievements  of  certain  other  countries  in 

^This  private  and  collegiate  instruction  is,  in  America,  endowed 
by  at  least  $225,000,000. 

-The  American  public  school  system,  together  with  the  socio- 
logical work  of  an  aggressive  and  self-sacrificing  type  of  Chris- 
tianity in  promoting  public  morals,  is  the  whole  secret. 


INTOLERANCE  OF  PROGRESS.  129 

Christendom,  and  in  regard  to  the  matchless  opportunities 
for  higher  education  in  Germany  and  England. 

All  this,  however,  goes  to  show  that  the  great  facilities 
which  Christendom  now  offers  for  popular  schooling  are  of 
recent  date.  If  we  search  through  the  centuries  running 
back  to  the  pre-exilian  Hebrews,  educational  evolution  has 
been  slow  and  uneven  from  age  to  age.  The  great  modern 
universities  run  back  only  a  few  hundred  years,  and  popu- 
lar schooling  is  new  to  Christendom.  Vast  empires,  denom- 
inated "Christian,"  are  without  an  efficient  system  for 
educating  the  children  of  the  people. 

It  is  to  be  said,  moreover,  that  Christianity  has  been  nar- 
row-minded, as  was  Judaism ;  too  conservative  to  be  tolerant 
of  mental  progress,  throwing  the  weight  of  Biblical  inter- 
pretation against  freedom  of  thought,  and  adopting  theories 
of  inspiration  that  justified  ecclesiastics  in  giving  a  cruel 
reception  to  scientific  discovery, —  and  this  has  been  so  cen- 
tury after  century,  the  Church  often  maintaining  a  hostile 
attitude  and  policy  of  obstruction.  It  has  been  only  of  late 
admitted  as  conceivable  that  the  divine  government  of  the 
natural  world  should  be  commonly  carried  on  through  estab- 
lished laws  or  modes  of  action.  That  the  great  scientific 
discoveries,  wdiich  so  largely  sway  the  general  thought  of 
Christendom,  are  modern  rather  than  having  been  made 
long  ago  may  in  part  be  due  to  the  construction  put  upon 
its  charter  by  the  Christian  Church.  Indebted  as  it  is,  since 
the  era  of  toleration,  to  those  who  have  made  scientific  dis- 
coveries, for  the  ability  to  show  forth  the  things  of  God  in 
a  more  reasonable  way,  Christianity  has  upon  the  other 
hand  aided  the  students  of  nature  through  its  discipline  of 
the  mind  upon  the  highest  themes  ever  considered  by  man. 
This  has  favored  the  discovery  of  the  great  laws  which 
underlie  the  creative  acts  of  the  universe,^  the  very  ground- 

^The  influence  of  great  religious  truths  in  sharpening  and 
strengthening  the  understanding,  is  referred  to  by  Mill,  when  he 
speaks  of  the  debt  of  the  intellectual  development  of  Europe  to 
Christianity. —  Essay  on  Comte,  p.  113. 


130  CHRISTIAN  EDUCATION. 

work  of  Christian  thought  in  regard  to  the  Creator  having 
been  such  that  the  orderliness  of  creation  at  all  points  has 
more  easily  suggested  itself  to  the  scientific  thinkers  of 
Christendom  than  to  those  trained  in  the  cosmogony  of 
non-Christian  lands;  so  that  great  progress  was  made  at 
once,  as  soon  as  students  were  left  at  liberty  to  think  by 
relatively  peaceful  years  free  from  great  political  upheav- 
als, and  free  from  the  hostile  demonstrations  of  theologians 
who  had  made  the  mistake  of  supposing  themselves  mouth- 
pieces of  God. 

If  by  a  slow  and  halting  process  Christianity  has  finally 
reached  the  point  aimed  at  by  Judaism  more  than  two 
thousand  years  ago  of  giving  to  all  the  people  the  best  edu- 
cation available  at  the  time,  it  is  now  rapidly  making 
amends  for  dilatory  ages  by  putting  each  new  generation 
into  universal  possession  of  the  most  important  knowledge 
of  all  the  generations  that  preceded  it,  and  so  disciplining 
the  general  mind  as  to  facilitate  new  discovery.  And  what 
is  received  by  each  generation  is  increased  and  transmitted 
to  the  next  generation  —  that  handed-down  knowledge 
which  is  power  in  hands  fitted  to  receive  it.  So  the  present 
is  mastered  through  a  grip  upon  the  past.  For  the  heavy 
drafts  which  the  future  of  mankind  must  make  upon  a  vast 
accumulation  of  highly  organized  knowledge,  prepared 
aforetime  by  the  most  competent  men  of  preceding  ages, 
studious  of  the  interests  of  the  race  as  such  and  of  myriads 
of  generations  yet  unborn,  Christianity  aims  at  being  an 
educator  —  to  transmit  a  priceless  legacy  to  after  ages. 
And  Christianity  has  already  attempted  to  graft  upon  the 
non-Christian  racial  stocks  of  the  world  its  o\^ti  theory  and 
practice. 

This  is  undoubtedly  due  to  historic  precedent.  As  the 
idea  of  the  kingdom  of  God  was  transferred  from  the  Judaic 
to  Gentile  stock,  and  as  the  modern  vigor  of  Christianity  is 
closely  connected  with  the  infusion  of  Teutonic  blood  that 
was  barbaric  for  centuries  after  the  Christian  era,  it  has 
come  to  be  the  settled  belief  of  great  masses  of  the  rank  and 


PRESENT  ACTIVITIES.  131 

■file  of  the  Church  that  the  ideas  so  helpful  to  Christendom 
will  be  of  advantage  to  the  youth  of  non-Christian  peoples, 
who  may  best  be  reached  through  a  well-balanced,  sys- 
tematic education.  And  this  has  been  begun  on  so  vast  a 
scale  as  to  mark  a  new  epoch  in  social  evolution.  It  was  a 
remark  of  Lamartine  that  we  cannot  see  the  hand  of  God 
while  under  its  shadow,  and  this  new  Christian  departure 
is  so  recent  that  we  cannot  justly  estimate  its  true  propor- 
tions, yet  its  nature  and  movement  may  be  pertinently 
alluded  to.  This  it  is  most  convenient  to  do  in  connection 
with  an  inquiry  into  the  educational  work  of  the  other  four 
great  religions  of  the  world. 

II. 

It  is  now  more  than  three  score  and  ten  generations  since 
the  Brahmans  of  India  and  the  Jews  of  Palestine  took  dia- 
metrically opposite  courses  as  to  the  education  of  the  people ; 
the  reading  of  the  Jewish  sacred  books  being  commonly 
taught,  and  the  Brahmans  allowing  no  one  below  their  own 
caste  to  know  their  books.  It  is  this  principle  of  Hinduism, 
maintained  consistently  to  the  present  time  —  with  a  few 
exceptions  in  recent  years, —  that  has  led  the  Brahmans  in 
a  faith  that  has  come  down  from  the  heights  of  a  hundred 
generations  of  pure  blood  and  wilh  no  small  native  wealth 
at  Brahmanical  beck,  never  to  raise  one  finger  towards 
educating  the  manumitted  victims  of  caste  in  America, 
although,  upon  the  other  hand,  America  has  sent  an  incredi- 
ble number  of  Christian  teachers  to  India,  the  most  of  whom 
have  devoted  themselves  to  the  intellectual  and  moral  eleva- 
tion of  the  lowest  castes  and  outcasts.^ 

Another  difference  between  Hinduism  and  Christianity 
is  seen  by  a  comparison  of  illiteracy,  in  the  Indian  census  of 
1891  and  that  of  the  United  States  in  1890;  the  figures 

"Out  of  every  hundred  pupils  in  the  Christian  schools  of  India, 
twenty-eight  are  taught  by  Americans:  no  reckoning  being  made 
of  Village  Day  Schools.  Tide  the  figures  in  J.  S.  Dennis'  Centen- 
nial Survey  of  Foreign  Missions.    New  York,  1902. 


132  HINDU    EDUCATION. 

being  as  eight  hundred  and  ninety-one  illiterates  in  India  in 
every  thousand  of  the  population,  to  sixty-five  in  a  thou- 
sand in  America.^  It  further  appears  in  the  readiness  of 
the  people  to  avail  themselves  of  schooling.  The  English 
government  assumed  the  responsibility  of  education  in 
India  in  1854,  yet  the  present  enrollment  of  Hindu  boys  in 
proportion  to  a  given  population  is  as  fourteen,  to  two 
hundred  and  seventeen  boys  in  America ;  and  of  girls  where 
fifteen  out  of  a  given  population  go  to  school  in  India,  the 
attendance  of  American  girls  is  ten  hundred  and  fifteen.^ 

Yet  this  experiment  with  fifteen  girls  out  of  every  ten 
thousand  in  India  has  made  so  apparent  the  advantage  of 
their  education,  that  these  are  allowed  to  attend  school  till 
their  eleventh  or  twelfth  year.  Hindu  young  men  in  Cal- 
cutta University  are  now  conducting  a  Female  Educational 
Union,  to  promote  the  schooling  of  girls  in  the  Bengal  Presi- 
dency. Educated  Hindus  of  rank  and  wealth  are  begin- 
ning to  see  the  difference  between  a  woman  —  wearing  per- 
haps a  score  and  a  half  of  heavy  gold  bracelets  with  many 
chains  of  gold  and  precious  stones  about  her  neck  and  a 
costly  pearl  for  a  nose  ring  —  unwilling  to  take  the  trouble 
to  learn  to  read,  and  an  intelligent  and  well-educated 
English  woman.  The  representative  of  the  Brahmo-Somaj 
of  India,  Mozoomdar,  who  spoke  in  Chicago  at  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Keligions,  was  much  impressed  with  the  social 
position  occupied  by  women.  In  a  letter  to  his  countrymen, 
he  wrote :  * '  The  culture  of  the  women  of  America  deeply 
affects  me  when  I  contrast  it  with  the  condition  of  my 
beloved  country-women.  Without  the  American  woman 
more  than  half  the  brightness,  the  refinement,  the  joyousness 
and   character    of    the    great   republic    would   be    gone." 

^Based  upon  statistics  in  the  TJ.  8.  Bureau  of  Education  Report, 
1899-1900;  allowing  for  difference  in  items  included,  as  that  of 
sex.  Were  the  late  emancipated  slaves  in  America  excluded,  it 
would  be  891  illiterates  in  India  to  38  in  America,  in  every  thou- 
sand of  the  population. 

^Based  on  statistics  of  U.  8.  Bureau  of  Education  Report,  1899- 
1900. 


SCHOOLING  FOR  GIRLS.  133 

Among  native  Christians,  the  girls  often  attend  school  until 
twenty  or  more,^  and,  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  number 
from  Hindu  families,  they  are  availing  themselves  of  uni- 
versity courses, —  those  from  lower  castes,  particularly  the 
Kayasth  or  writer  caste  and  the  Vaisj^a  or  trading  caste, 
Ijeing  reported  as  far  ahead  of  the  Brahmans  in  gaining  the 
higher  education. 

With  nearly  five  millions  of  pupils  in  the  government  and 
private  Christian  schools,  of  whom  nearly  a  hundred  and 
twenty-five  thousand  are  in  college  or  schools  that  fit  for 
college-,  may  it  not  be  hoped  that  within  a  few  centuries  a 
great  social  change  will  be  effected  in  the  education  of  the 
Hindus? 

III. 

Buddhism,  upon  entering  Siam,  supplanted  cannibalism 
and  demon  worship;  greatly  elevating  the  social  condition 
of  the  people.  Here  there  has  been  no  dissent  for  twelve 
hundred  years.  The  natives  love  to  call  Siam  the  "King- 
dom of  the  free."  As  a  whole  they  are  indolent  and  impro- 
vident; yet  temperate,  tolerant,  benevolent,  polite,  hospita- 
ble to  strangers  and  to  the  poor,  and  they  are  not  quarrel- 
some. The  government  is  easily  supported  by  the  well- 
to-do,  in  part  through  a  generous  taxation  of  theatricals  and 
dancing  —  most  cheerily  contributed.  A  knowledge  of 
reading  and  writing  is  given  to  the  boys  at  the  monasteries.^ 
But  the  monks  of  the  present  day  are  so  far  out  of  touch 

•The  Rev.  S.  Y.  Abrahams. 

=The  government  statistics  of  1896-97;  and  J.  S.  Dennis'  Tables 
lor  1900, —  the  day  school  enrollment  being  a  pro  rata  estimate. 

^Ages  upon  ages  ago,  when  the  Brahmans  in  India  were  deny- 
ing the  right  of  the  lower  castes  to  read  on  religion,  the  Bud- 
dhist monks  were  everywhere  giving  instruction  to  all  comers 
of  the  youth  of  Asia,  as  a  fair  equivalent  for  daily  bread  bestowed 
upon  them  in  princely  profusion.  So  thoroughly  did  these  wise 
and  benevolent  men  commend  themselves,  that,  in  the  most 
favored  lands,  it  came  to  be  good  usage  to  require  all  youth,  who 
should  serve  the  state  in  any  capacity  whatever,  to  spend  at 
least  three  months  as  novitiates  in  the  Sangha. 


134  BUDDHIST  SCHOOLING. 

with  the  current  life  of  the  world,  that  the  schooling  they 
give  is  esteemed  profitless,  a  jingling  sound  without  sense.^ 
To  give  at  a  glance  the  educational  difference  between  a 
Buddhist  and  a  Christian  state,  the  Siamese  pupils  in  the 
Sangha  schools  are  as  one  to  one  hundred  and  seven  of  the 
whole  population,  and  in  Massachusetts  the  pupils  are  as  one 
to  six  of  the  population.^  The  Buddhist  rulers  have,  how- 
ever, extended  a  hearty  welcome  to  a  suitable  introduction 
of  western  ideas,  more  so  than  rulers  dominated  by  other 
Oriental  religions.  Although  it  had  been  in  vain  that  the 
English  government  sought  to  enter  Siam  in  1822,  1826, 
and  again  in  1850,  yet  happily  the  heir  to  the  throne  became 
the  pupil  of  a  missionary  of  the  American  Board  in  lan- 
guage and  sciences,  and  with  the  ^beginning  of  his  reign  in 
1857  a  more  liberal  policy  was  adopted.  From  that  day  to 
this,  American  teachers  have  had  considerable  influence 
with  the  government.  Arriving  in  the  country  in  1828,  at 
first  to  labor  among  the  Chinese,  their  schools  commended 
themselves  to  the  Siamese  people,  and  after  some  years  they 
were  formally  endorsed  by  royal  authority  :^ — ' '  The  Ameri- 
can missionaries  have  always  been  just  and  upright  men. 
They  have  never  meddled  in  the  affairs  of  government  nor 
created  any  difficulty  with  the  Siamese.  They  have  lived 
with  the  Siamese  just  as  if  they  belonged  to  the  nation. 
The  government  of  Siam  has  great  love  and  respect  for 
them,  and  has  no  fear  whatever  concerning  them.  When 
there  has  been  a  difficulty  of  any  kind,  the  missionaries 
have  many  times  rendered  valuable  assistance.  For  this 
reason  the  Siamese  have  loved  and  respected  them  for  a 
long  time.  The  Americans  have  also  taught  the  Siamese 
many  things."  Upon  subsequent  occasions  the  Siamese 
regent  affirmed  that  ' '  Siam  was  not  opened  by  British  gun- 

'So  it  is  characterized  by  a  Siamese  nobleman,  cited  in  Alabas- 
ter's Wheel  of  the  Law,  p.  4. 

^Based  on  figures  in  the  Statesman's  Year  Book,  and  the  Massa- 
chusetts statistics  for  1885. 

»By  the  king  reigning,  1851-1868. 


THE  JAPANESE  EMPIRE.  135 

powder,  like  China,  but  by  the  influence  of  missionaries." 
And  the  present  king  has  said,  in  giving  an  audience  at 
Petchaburee :  "  I  always  have  and  I  always  shall  encourage 
the  American  missionaries."^ 

In  Burmah  most  of  the  men  can  read  and  write,  being 
taught  so  much  by  the  monastery  schools;  and  most  of  the 
boys,  says  Bishop  Titcomb,  are  placed  in  the.  monastery 
itself  for  a  few  months  of  moral  instruction.^  A  certain 
skill  in  argumentation  is  gained  in  these  schools,  and  a 
degree  of  aptness  in  speech.  So  little  is  the  schooling,  how- 
ever, that  no  great  number  of  pupils  are  enrolled  at  once; 
the  pupils  for  1889- '90  being,  when  compared  with  a  pro- 
portionate population,  but  one  pupil  in  Burmah  to  nine  in 
New  England.  American  Baptist  teachers  are  engaged  in 
so  great  a  work  in  Burmah,  that,  if  other  denominations 
in  the  field  are  doing  as  much,  Christianity  has  half  as 
many  pupils  as  the  Buddhists," —  and  that  with  the  base  of 
operations  across  the  globe. 

Japan,  lying  eastward  of  China,  is  called  the  Land  of  the 
Sunrise.  The  early  Shinto  training  has  filled  the  land  with 
flowers.  Climbing  plants  and  arbor  life  are  favored  by  the 
tropic  heat  carried  so  far  north  by  deep-sea  currents.  The 
myriad  little  isles,  and  the  larger  with  their  picturesque 
coast  outline  and  with  their  highland  streams  and  rich 
valleys,  are  really  but  the  crests  of  submerged  mountains, 
so  deep  is  the  blue  water  flowing  along  this  kingdom  in  the 
sea.  It  is  as  if  New  England,  New  York  and  Pennsylvania* 
were  afloat  and  anchored  there,  as  to  size,  with  two-thirds 
the  present  population  of  the  United  States  packed  into  its 
numberless  villages  and  the  few  large  cities.  The  social 
changes  wrought  in  Japan  within  the  lifetime  of  Marquis 

^Historical   Sketches    of   Preshyterian   Missions.    Philadelphia, 

^Buddhism,  p.  126. 

Girls  of  the  better  class  learn  to  read  at  home. —  Fieldings' 
Soul  of  a  Peo2)le,  pp.  191,  192. 

^This  statement  is  based  upon  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education 
Reports  as  to  Burmese  education,  and  recent  missionary  statistics. 

*0r  England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  and  Greece. 


136  BUDDHIST  SCHOOLING. 

Ito  is  without  a  parallel  in  history.  It  has  come  about  by 
the  educative  power  of  new  ideas.  "When  Neesima,  the 
founder  of  the  Doshisha,  was  a  youth,  his  whole  life  was 
revolutionized  by  two  papers  printed  in  Chinese,  prepared 
by  Dr.  Bridgman  of  Shanghai, —  a  brief  history  of  the 
United  States,  and  a  brief  story  of  the  Bible.  From  read- 
ing one,  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  Japanese  govern- 
ment had  no  arbitrary  right  to  cut  off  people's  heads  as  if 
they  were  cats  and  dogs,  and  from  reading  the  other,  he 
learned  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God.^  Ultimately,  with  his 
strong  religious  nature,  he  concluded  to  trust  his  Heavenly 
Father,  and  he  ran  away  to  America,  praying :  "  0  God,  if 
Thou  hast  eyes,  see  me ;  if  Thou  hast  ears,  hear  me ;  I  want 
to  be  civilized  by  the  Bible. "  A  hundred  years  ago,  the  Jap- 
anese liberal  party  which  desired  intercourse  with  foreign 
nations  used  to  call  the  conservatives  "frogs  in  a  well." 
The  liberals  came  to  the  front  after  Japan  was  peacefully 
opened  by  Commodore  Perry  to  the  world ;  and  the  govern- 
ment then  took  the  amazing  policy  of  sending  their  choicest 
young  men  to  various  parts  of  Christendom  to  pursue  thor- 
ough courses  of  education,  in  order  to  change  the  face  of  the 
open  minded  Japanese  society  by  bringing  in  a  new  set  of 
ideas.  ''Knowledge  shall  be  sought  for  throughout  the 
whole  world,"  was  the  Imperial  proclamation.  The  stu- 
dents who  came  to  America  were  maintained  by  philan- 
thropic aid  when  support  from  home  was  cut  off  by  ci^dl 
war.  The  Japanese  common  school  system  as  it  is  to-day, 
enrolling  more  than  five  millions  of  pupils  —  of  whom  two- 
fifths  are  girls, —  was  one  of  the  ideas  imported  from  the 
United  States.  And  whatever  was  done  to  furnish  foreign 
moral  education  to  Japan  prior  to  1887,  was  five-sixths  of 
it  American,  as  to  the  number  of  workers, —  the  Americans 
beginning  a  decade  before  any  other  nationality.-     For  girls 

'Hardy's  'Neesima,  p.  31. 

=It  is  stated  by  W.  Elliott  Griffis,  D.  D.,  late  Professor  in  the 
Imperial  University  of  Tokio,  that  the  early  American  work  for 
the  Land  of  the  Four  Seas,  comprised  also  the  geological  survey 


THE  JAPANESE  EMPIRE.  137 

no  schooling  is  furnished  in  Buddhist  Siam  and  Burmah, 
unless  through  very  limited  instruction  at  home;  but  in 
Japan  there  have  been  from  ancient  times  private  instruct- 
ors for  training  girls  in  etiquette,  instrumental  music,  the 
arrangement  of  flowers,  the  giving  of  ceremonial  teas,  in 
sewing,  simple  epistolary  writing,  and  sometimes  the  read- 
ing of  the  Chinese  Classics.  In  the  school  of  etiquette  for 
hoys,  Joseph  Neesima  learned  to  make  the  most  profound 
bows,  and  was  trained  in  graceful  manners  and  movements. 
It  was  a  point  also  to  acquire  a  polite  style  of  conversational 
phrases.  Neesima,  too,  learned  cup  bearing  and  to  wait 
upon  gentleman  at  meals.  At  home,  the  boy  was  taught 
expert  penmanship  by  his  father.  He  also  learned  to  ride 
horseback,  and  practiced  sword  exercises.  Later,  under 
private  tutors,  he  studied  mathematics  and  the  Dutch 
language. 

For  some  hundreds  of  years  after  Buddhism  entered 
Japan,  the  monks  conducted  most  of  the  educational  work, 
hut  the  Confucianists  at  a  later  period  trained  the  leaders 
of  thought  and  the  most  intellectual  of  the  people.  During 
two  recent  centuries  the  Dutch  have  educated  many  Jap- 
anese surgeons  and  naval  officers.  Some  sixty  thousand 
young  men  are  now  in  the  schools  for  higher  education; 
more  than  twenty-seven  thousand  being  in  technical  schools, 
and  nine  thousand  in  colleges  and  universities. 

Had  the  Japanese  Buddhists  with  their  sea-going  enter- 
prise undertaken  in  advance  of  the  Americans  the  social 
renovation  of  the  Hawaiian  Islands  and  Micronesia,  or  Poly- 
nesia in  advance  of  the  British,  and  could  they  have  done  for 
those  savage  islands  a  few  generations  ago  what  the  early 
Buddhists  did  for  Siam  in  the  removal  of  cruel  customs,  it 
would  have  evinced  in  a  notable  manner  the  educative  value 
of  their  system  and  its  adaptation    to    the    modern  age. 

of  the  islands,  the  organization  of  the  internal  revenue  and  the 
banking  system,  the  preparation  of  a  dictionary  and  the  grammar 
work  needful  for  studying  the  language,  and  a  translation  of  the 
Bible. 


138  CHRISTIAN  EDUCATION. 

With  their  neglect  of  such  an  opportunity  and  the  question 
it  raises  of  their  requisite  moral  power,  another  question  is 
brought  up  respecting  the  present  value  of  their  influence 
in  the  Japanese  schools,  as  reported  by  an  officer  of  the 
national  department  of  education,  who,  upon  examining  a 
town  in  Northern  Japan,  found,  of  ninety-nine  boys  and 
nineteen  girls  averaging  fourteen  years  old,  twenty-five 
believing  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  twenty-five  in  the 
existence  of  a  soul  but  not  in  its  immortality,  and  fourteen 
girls  and  forty-eight  boys  not  believing  in  any  soul  what- 
ever. Two-thirds  of  the  children  believed  that  the  worship 
of  the  Shinto  and  Buddhist  gods  was  a  social  custom  only, 
relating  to  no  power  that  could  affect  individual  life.^ 

The  Japanese  department  of  public  education  has,  how- 
ever, begun  to  issue  text-books  with  an  ethical  bearing  that 
will  be  of  great  advantage  to  future  generations.- 

IV.' 

The  name  of  Confucius  must  always  stand  with  that  of 
Socrates  the  Greek  and  Moses  the  Hebrew,  with  Zoroaster 
the  Persian  and  Gautama  the  Prince  of  India,  with  Moham- 
med the  Arabian,  wuth  thoughtful  sages  on  the  plains  of 

^Letter  of  Rev.  John  L.  Deering,  of  Yokohama,  in  The  Watch- 
man. Boston. 

*As  to  the  present  number  of  pupils  enrolled  in  Christian 
schools,  in  Buddhist,  Ceylon,  Siam,  Burmah,  and  Japan,  it  is 
impossible  to  speak  with  confidence.  There  are  more  than  fifty- 
three  hundred  in  universities,  colleges  and  fitting  schools;  and 
nearly  fifteen  thousand  in  theological  and  training  schools,  board- 
ing and  high  schools  and  seminaries,  industrial  training  institu- 
tions and  classes,  medical  schools  and  schools  for  nurses,  and 
kindergartens.  If  a  pro  rata  estimate  might  be  made  of  the 
attendance  upon  day  schools,  there  should  be  added  nearly  a 
hundred  and  twenty-five  thousand;  but  the  conditions  so  vary 
in  different  parts  of  the  world,  that  it  is  not  so  safe  to  rely  upon 
such  an  estimate  as  in  a  country  like  India  where  the  village 
day  schools  are  favored;  certainly  the  circumstances  in  Japan 
make  the  mission  day-school  system  less  needful. 


CONFUCIUS.  13^ 

India  whose  dim  vision  of  God  endures  when  their  names 
have  perished, —  in  the  ranks  of  the  immortal  few,  whose 
fame  will  endure  upon  this  globe  so  long  as  rivers  run,  so 
long  as  roars  the  sea.  However  in  the  light  of  recent  centu- 
ries we  may  speak  of  the  essential  limitations  of  his  intel- 
lectual concepts  and  his  lack  of  spiritual  apprehension,  it 
will  never  cease  to  be  a  wonder  in  all  ages  that  Confucius 
should  seize  upon  the  plastic  millions  of  one  of  the  mightiest 
empires  of  the  globe  and  shape  them  at  will.  The  reason  is 
not  far  to  seek,  little  as  we  understand  it,  and  little  as  we 
can  analyze  it.  It  is  found  in  the  character  of  the  national 
mind,  not  made,  but  modified  by  him.  Indeed,  in  many  re- 
spects he  is  to  be  accepted  as  the  typical  Chinaman,  the  na- 
tion at  its  best.^  Whatever  were  the  leading  traits  of  the- 
Chinese  mind,  critically  decided  upon  and  authoritatively 
announced  by  specialists  after  careful  analysis  and  proof 
from  the  Chinese  history,  it  is  certain  that  there  were  emi- 
nent sages  before  the  time  of  Confucius,  so  many  in  number,, 
so  weighty  in  character  as  to  form  a  sharply  defined  national 
mind ;  and  that  the  editor  of  the  Classics  took  their  work  and 
added  to  it  and  subtracted  from  it,  and  fitted  it  for  trans- 
mission to  subsequent  ages;-  and  that  the  national  mind 

^How  literally  true  this  is,  appears  in  the  saying  of  a  Chinese 
emperor  a  thousand  years  ago,  that  Confucianism  is  adapted  to 
the  Chinese  people  as  water  to  the  fish. 

-The  relative  rank  and  value  of  the  work  of  Confucius  may  be 
settled  by  inquiring  whether  we  can  easily  imagine  the  career 
oE  Socrates  as  consisting  solely  in  editing  earlier  Greek  notions, 
then  leading  by  moral  force  the  versatile  Greeks  to  accept  them 
and  to  take  their  stand  upon  them  without  advancing  an  inck 
farther  for  two  thousand  years;  or  whether  we  can  imagine' 
Gautama  as  taking  the  pith  of  the  Hindu  books  of  his  age  and. 
compressing  them  into  short  compass,  and  then  persuading  the 
philosophic  mind  of  his  native  land,  so  keen,  so  subtle,  to  stand 
upon  them,  without  indulging  in  that  interminable  drift  of 
thought  so  characteristic  of  the  Hindus.  Or,  barring  the  ques- 
tion of  his  inspiration,  can  we  think  of  Moses  as  sitting  down, 
calmly  upon  the  banks  of  the  Nile,  and  there  gathering  up  the 
wisdom  of  Egypt;    and  so  stamping  it  upon  the  priesthood   of 


140  CHINESE  EDUCATION. 

already  formed  in  the  more  thoughtful  people  generation 
after  generation,  accepted  the  Confucian  work  as  its  own ; 
and  that  the  national  evolution  took  place  along  lines 
already  marked  out. 

Confucius  once  spoke  of  himself  as  a  man  who  in  his  eager 
pursuit  of  knowledge  forgot  his  food.  He  was  essentially  a 
student  and  a  teacher.  Confucius  so  embodied  the  philo- 
sophical maxims  of  the  earliest  Chinese  sages  in  his  own 
life,  as  to  serve  for  an  example  to  all  the  ages ;  it  was  his  wis- 
dom which  made  his  own  sovereign  the  most  powerful  among 
the  provincial  kings.  These  ideas  he  grafted  upon  the  life 
of  his  people  as  a  teacher,  tutoring  young  men  during  forty- 
five  years;  among  his  three  thousand  pupils,  five  hundred 
became  mandarins,  and  seventy-two  achieved  honorable  rank 
in  the  literary  annals  of  their  country.  When  his  very 
human  king  finally  wearied  of  the  sage  and  his  insistence 
upon  virtue,  Confucius  opened  a  peripatetic  school,  wander- 
ing from  city  to  city.  His  ideas,  enforcing  the  accumulated 
wisdom  of  all  the  preceding  ages,  were  suited  to  the  genius 
of  the  most  thoughtful  people  who  loiew  him,  and  his 
edition  of  the  Classics  stood  for  the  high-water  mark  of  the 
Chinese  literature.  The  studies  of  the  Classics  into  which 
he  inducted  so  many  youth,  were  maintained  after  him  for 
seventy  generations.  These  ideas  proved  in  use  so  service- 
able to  society  as  it  then  existed,  and  of  so  great  value  to  the 
state,  that  their  study  was  made  binding  upon  all  who 
would  hold  office, —  the  matter  being  taken  up  by  those  in 
authority  not  long  after  the  death  of  Confucius.  This  set- 
tled the  matter  for  subsequent  centuries:  the  ultimate 
influence  of  the  Classics  being  not  so  much  due  to  the 
intrinsic  value  of  their  ideas  as  to  their  use  in  the  national 
competitive  examinations.     The  ideas  were  such  that  they 

Osiris  and  the  lotuf-eaters,  and  the  leek  and  onion  raising  popu- 
lation around  him,  and  the  very  brickmakers  who  were  lashed 
by  the  Pharoahs,  as  to  compel  its  acceptance,  and  the  main- 
tenance of  their  civilization,  already  antique,  at  an  even  level  for 
thousands  of  years? 


CIVIL  SERVICE  EXAMINATIONS.  141 

aJl  tended  to  conserve  the  state;  and  the  state  very  judi- 
ciously conserved  the  ideas.  So  the  slow-molded,  careful 
people  of  the  empire,  of  enterprise  in  looking  to  their 
own  interests,  with  sense  to  see  the  social  value  of  certain 
well  ordered  moralities,  with  a  high  appreciation  of  the 
necessity  for  a  strong  government  and  of  the  efficiency  of 
absolute  power  when  limited  by  ancient  custom  and  the 
influence  of  a  powerful  class  of  educated  men;  with  a 
rigid  determination  age  after  age  to  keep  the  best  ideas  of 
the  nation  at  the  front  by  ceaselessly  dinging  them  into 
all  youthful  ears  that  were  open  to  receive  them;  with  a 
determination  to  put  a  premium  upon  these  lessons  of 
antiquity;  with  as  rigid  a  determination  that  the  heart  of 
Asia  should  beat  true  to  itself, —  this  isolated  people,  whose 
ships  could  sail  to  no  far-off  seas,  whose  intellectual  and 
moral  superiority  and  rude  armies  could  easily  master  neigh- 
boring Asia,  and  whose  wheelbarrows  at  one  time  lacked  but 
little  of  trundling  to  the  Atlantic ;  this  people,  so  reverent 
toward  superiors,  so  eminent  in  filial  piety,  so  economically 
industrious,  so  patiently  persistent,  so  self-contained,  so 
content,  and  so  justly  conceited  with  the  pride  of  perma- 
nency in  their  power  of  immemorial  generations;  this  peo- 
ple so  fertile  in  resources  unlooked  for  by  their  Occidental 
neighbors ;  a  people  receptive  of  new  notions  that  are  prove'd. 
to  be  good,  but  impatient  at  being  disturbed  in  their  con- 
servatism for  trivial  reasons;  this  people  so  monotonously 
capable  and  evenly  balanced  —  of  no  nimble  wit,  but  acute 
and  astute  and  practical  in  their  intellectual  operations  — 
stood  behind  Confucius  to  perpetuate  his  fame. 

By  bestowing  government  office  upon  those  only  who  suc- 
ceed in  a  competitive  examination  upon  the  Classics,  great 
coherency  has  been  given  to  the  nation  through  unifying 
the  ideal  of  the  foremost  youth  and  making  it  for  the  inter- 
est of  the  individual  that  the  government  should  be  main- 
tained. This  ideal  of  an  education,  the  best  known  to  the 
nation,  the  student  forms  in  early  life ;  but  its  finally  lead- 
ing the  individual  to  public  employment  always  depends  on 


142  CHINESE  EDUCATION. 

the  maintenance  of  the  public  order,  so  that  every  class  of 
literary  graduates  has  proved  another  support  to  the  sta- 
bility of  the  empire.  Even  if  literary  aspirants  do  not  all 
obtain  office,  those  completing  the  examination  constitute  a 
highly  privileged  class  in  relation  to  those  in  authority.  It 
is  also  to  the  advantage  of  the  nation  as  such,  that  the 
humblest  can  compete  with  the  highest.  Youth  of  the  lowest 
families,  through  a  certain  intellectual  force,  have  been  con- 
stantly reaching  exalted  station  during  more  than  a  score 
of  centuries.  The  common  people  constitute  a  factor 
always  to  be  taken  into  account  by  their  superiors.  There 
is  no  hereditary  nobility ;  nor  is  there  anything  like  a  priest- 
hood among  Confucianists.  Education  stands  in  lieu  of 
feudal  rank,  and  the  literary  class  is  constantly  recruited 
from  the  agriculturalists,  the  mechanics,  and  the  tradesmen.^ 
There  is  a  small  tuition  for  the  teacher,  although  to  some 
extent  free  schools  were  established  by  the  emperor  in  1730. 
The  children  of  the  mercantile  classes  and  the  wealthier  of 
the  agriculturalists  usually  learn  to  handle  an  accountant's 
wire  and  block  frame,  and  to  write,  and  to  read  more  or  less 
of  the  Classics  in  an  unspoken  language.  Teachers  are 
abundant,  being  often  those  who  have  failed  to  pass  the 
higher  examinations.  All  over  the  great  inland  provinces, 
along  the  broad  rivers,  on  high  table-lands,  among  the 
mountains,  and  by  the  side  of  the  sea,  the  more  dense  popu- 
lations have  had  schooling  for  ages ;  from  generation  to  gen- 
eration the  boys  have  entered,  first  reverently  bowing  to  the 
tablet  of  Confucius;  each  successive  series  of  boys  at  work 
on  the  Classics  in  a  dead  or  unspoken  language ;  then  from 
each  school  a  list  is  made  up  of  those  most  apt  and  most 
ambitious  and  who  can  afford  to  go  forward,  who  become 

'Incidentally,  it  may  be  noted  that  this  fact,  of  the  constant 
building  up  of  the  literary  class  from  the  ranks  of  the  common 
people  is  not  without  great  import  as  to  the  future  of  China, 
since  the  "Western  philanthropists  at  work  in  the  empire  win 
their  principal  following  from  the  lower  ranks  in  which  capable 
persons  are  always  to  be  found. 


CIVIL  SERVICE  EXAMINATIONS.  143 

candidates  for  degrees  in  the  more  advanced  schools  which 
are  opened  by  the  government. 

All  have  a  right  to  the  first  examination,  but  the  second 
is  never  open  to  one  who  did  not  pass  the  first,  and  the 
advanced  degrees  are  limited  by  the  government  as  to  the 
number  which  can  be  conferred  in  any  given  year.  There 
may  be  two  thousand  students  in  one  district  examined  for 
the  first  degree,  during  five  days  in  succession  at  one  stage, 
and  five  at  another;  and  a  like  number  of  days  for  more 
advanced  examinations.  Those  of  the  second  degree  gain  civil 
privileges,  exemption  from  certain  punishments;  but  the 
number  is  so  sharply  limited  that  in  a  population  of  twenty 
millions  there  may  be  ten  thousand  competitors,  yet  only 
ninety  degrees  conferred ;  nine  thousand,  nine  hundred  and 
ten  missing  it.  All  told,  says  Martin,  there  are  about  two 
millions  of  candidates  every  year ;  but  only  two  or  three  out 
of  every  hundred  receive  the  coveted  degrees.  That  is,  the 
annual  candidates  are  as  one  to  every  two  hundred  of  the 
total  population  of  the  empire,  of  whom  one  out  of  every 
ten  or  fifteen  thousand  of  the  census  is  —  through  the  lim- 
itation imposed  by  the  government  —  successful.  Some- 
times those  who  fail,  compete  again  and  again.  President 
Martin,  of  the  University  of  Wuchong,  instanced  one  exam- 
ination where  there  were  ninety-nine  who  succeeded ;  and  at 
an  average  they  were  over  thirty  years  old;  fourteen  were 
over  forty,  one  sixty-two,  and  one  eighty-three.  The  com- 
petition for  the  third  degree  occurs  at  the  capital.  There 
are,  perhaps,  six  thousand  candidates,  to  whom  three  hun- 
dred and  fifty  degrees  are  open.  The  names  of  the  suc- 
cessful become  at  once  the  pride  of  the  provinces ;  they  are 
the  picked  men,  through  whom  the  nation  itself  is  to  be 
kept  to  its  standard.  With  all  its  drawbacks,  says  Presi- 
dent Martin,  the  civil  service  examination  has  done  more 
than  anything  else  to  hold  China  together,  and  help  her 
maintain  a  respectable  standard  of  civilization.  The  liter- 
ary class,  so  called,  throughout  the  empire  aggregates  from 
two  to  three  millions.     This  would  be  as  if  —  we  will  say  — 


144  CHINESE  EDUCATION. 

one  man  out  of  every  one  hundred  and  sixty-six  of  the  total 
population,  is  a  very  highly  educated  man,  according  to  the 
Chinese  standard;  and  all  together,  they  constitute  a  most 
conservative  influential  body  supporting  the  existing  order 
of  things.  Success  in  the  examinations  mainly  hinges  upon 
one's  ability  to  hold  in  mind  the  Classics  that  have  been, 
studied  during  so  many  years.  It  is  an  astonishing  train- 
ing of  the  memory.  One  effect  of  this  is  the  transmission 
of  disciplined  memories  from  father  to  son.  The  average 
pupil  in  a  Christian  mission  school  in  China  is  found  to 
have  by  heredity  an  aptitude  to  memorize  not  found  among 
Occidentals.  And  it  is  to  be  said  with  an  emphasis,  that 
the  diplomats  of  foreign  nations  have  found  that  the  Chi- 
nese system  of  competitive  examinations  has  brought  to  the 
front  picked  men  of  fine  culture,  keen  of  intellect,  and  o.f 
great  native  capacity,  for  the  conduct  of  national  affairs.^ 

As  a  national  plan  to  educate  all  the  people,  the  Chinese 
system  is  a  failure.  It  is  in  no  sense  public  education,  but 
a  public  use  of  the  education  of  the  few.  Although  nine  out 
of  ten  can  read  a  few  characters  required  in  their  business, 
not  one  out  of  twenty  can  read  a  newspaper,  and  one  out  of 
fifty  can  pick  up  an  ordinary  book  and  read  it  intelligently.^ 

*It  would  be  diflficult  to  state  briefly  the  authorities  upon  this 
unique  system.  Professor  Douglas'  China  is  one  of  the  best 
books,  in  popular  style,  and  of  the  highest  authority;  there  is  a. 
New  York  edition.  The  educational  chapter  in  Professor  S. 
Wells  Williams'  Middle  Kingdom  is  very  full  and  explicit. 
Edkins'  Religion  in  China,  third  edition  (London,  1884),  and 
Archdeacon  Moule's  New  China  and  Old  (London,  1891),  are  very 
valuable  books;  p.  40  in  the  one,  and  pp.  261-267  in  the  other, 
relating  to  education.  Then  there  is  that  curiously  interesting- 
work.  The  Chinese  Painted  hy  Themselves,  by  Colonel  Tcheng- 
ki-tong  (London,  1884),  p.  64,  referring  to  education.  Schmidt's 
Geschichte  der  Pwdagogik,  Dittes  and  Hannock's  edition,  contains 
the  best  account.  Consult  also  President  Martin's  Lore  of  Cathay, 
Chap.  XVII. 

^Authorities  are  substantially  agreed  upon  this  estimate.  If 
this  be  correct,  it  is  much  worse  than  India;  although  little 
worse  than  Christian  Equador. 


POPUL.VR    ILLITERACY.  145 

A  minute  fraction  of  the  whole  number  of  boys  —  and  no 
girls  —  ever  see  the  inside  of  a  school  room,  and  only  a 
microscopic  part  of  these  ever  continue  their  studies  to  such 
a  point  as  to  make  them  of  practical  use.^  Yet,  since  edu- 
cation is  the  way  to  power,  all  families  who  can  afford  the 
tuition  send  their  sons,  from  sunrise  till  ten,  and  from  eleven 
till  five,  daily,  save  that  in  summer  there  is  no  second  ses- 
sion. Every  boy  studies  aloud,  at  the  top  of  his  voice.  The 
whole  course,  ten  years  or  more,  should  be  taken,  to  be  of 
any  real  value.  In  reading,  the  characters  are  different 
from  those  in  common  use.  If  one  fails  to  attend  school 
for  at  least  five  or  six  years,  he  rarely  finds  a  book  thereafter 
that  he  can  read.  Memorizing  the  Classics  is  begun  so 
early  that  a  boy  does  not  understand  the  ideas,  and  the 
teacher  does  not  explain.  The  boy  is  not  taught  to  think, 
but  to  repeat.  If  he  fails  to  push  on  to  an  examination,  he 
forgets  what  he  once  recited  without  understanding  it. 
Yet  the  school  boy  gains  this :  ' '  He  learns  obedience  and 
respect  for  authority,  and  learns  to  be  industrious.  "- 

As  a  scheme  for  educating  a  class  of  literary  men  from 
which  government  officers  may  be  selected  —  in  China  pre- 
eminently the  leaders  of  the  nation, —  the  system  is  like 
what  we  should  have  in  England,  Germany,  or  America 
to-day,  if  there  were  no  other  education  than  that  of  taking 
such  lads  as  can  afford  to  pay  tuition  and  drilling  them  to 
memorize  the  Greek  and  Hebrew  Scriptures,  or,  for  that 
matter,  Kent's  Commentaries  or  Blackstone  written  in 
Latin  or  some  language  unknown  to  the  common  people ; 
and  then  putting  them  through  repeated  examinations  to 
test  their  memories,  and  their  skill  in  reproducing  in  essays 
and  poems  the  ideas  they  have  gathered,  and  then  systemati- 
cally parceling  the  public  offices  for  a  brief  term  among  a 
few  of  the  most  successful.^ 

^A.  H.  Smith's  Natural  History  of  the  Chinese  Boy  and  of  the 
Chinese  Girl,  p.  27.  1883. 

^Arthur  H.  Smith. 

'It  does  not  seem  fair  to  mention  the  abuse  of  the  system  as  an 
argument  against  it.  In  America  or  in  Great  Britain  there  would 
10 


146  CHINESE  EDUCATION. 

The  tests  in  Chinese  literary  composition  required  in  the 
examinations  presuppose  an  extraordinary  memory  trained 
through  years  of  study,  an  extensive  knowledge  of  the  writ- 
ten characters  of  the  language,  and  an  arrangement  that  is 
to  the  Chinese  ear  musical ;  this,  and  a  thorough  grounding 
in  the  maxims  of  the  sages  of  two  thousand  years  ago,  with 
habits  of  obedience  and  of  industry,  constitute  the  practical 
outcome  of  a  period  of  fifteen  to  twenty-five  years'  study 
to  the  few  who  can  take  the  time  for  it.  Yet  the  fact  of 
fifteen  to  twenty-five  years'  study  for  public  men  during 
forty  generations  is  of  surpassing  interest.  Philosophy, 
classical  literature,  cultivated  manners,  an  orderly  govern- 
ment, and  varied  industrial  arts  flourished  in  China  during 
many  ages  in  which  the  Germanic  peoples  were  still  bar- 
baric. It  is  no  wonder  that  the  most  eminent  scholars  of 
the  empire  have  until  recent  years  thought  it  little  worth 
while  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  the  outer  world. 

Sir  Robert  Hart,  for  so  long  a  period  the  honored  Chief 
Inspector  of  the  Chinese  customs  service,  stated  a  few 
years  ago  that  there  were  only  ten  or  twenty  men  in  the 
whole  empire  who  thought  that  western  appliances  were 
valuable ;  that  not  one  Chinaman  out  of  one  hundred  thou- 
sand knew  anything  about  such  inventions ;  and  that,  taking 
the  whole  population,  not  one  out  of  ten  thousand  knew  any- 
thing about  foreigners.  Yet  in  the  long  and  illustrious 
reign  of  Chien  Lung  in  the  eighteenth  century,  the  Roman 
Catholic  missionaries  were  tolerated  on  account  of  their 
knowledge  of  astronomy  and  mathematics,  which  proved 
useful  for  the  correction  of  the  calendar;  and  that  Occi- 
dental knowledge  has  been  welcome  to  the  few  able  to  appre- 
ciate its  value,  has  been  amply  proved  since  so  many  philan- 
thropic educational  workers  of  Christendom  have  resided 

Ibe  more  or  less  corruption  —  through  favor  or  the  payment  of 
money  —  to  vitiate  the  working  of  it  as  a  scheme  for  perfecting 
civil  service,  and  that  is  the  way  it  works  in  China.  Vide  the 
chapter  on  education  in  S.  Wells  Williams'  Middle  Kingdom; 
and  Douglas'  China,  pp.  104,  105.  Compare,  however,  Cycle  of 
Cathay,  p.  329. 


THE   BROxVDENING    CURRICULUM.  147 

in  China  in  recent  years.  When  it  became  known  that  Dr. 
Ilapper  was  about  to  plant  a  new  college,  some  four  hun- 
dred of  the  officers,  gentry,  and  scholars  of  Canton  and 
vicinity  asked  that  it  might  be  located  in  that  city.  Of  the 
signers  of  this  petition  ten  were  members  of  the  Imperial 
Academy,  and  more  than  a  hundred  and  twenty  were 
scholars  of  the  first  and  the  second  degree,  and  a  hundred  of 
them  were  holding  official  positions  under  the  government. 
President  Martin's  career  as  an  educator  has  been  most 
notable.  To  China  he  has  given  translations  of  Wheaton's 
International  Law,  and  of  legal  codes  French  and  English, 
works  upon  history,  natural  philosophy,  physical  geography, 
physiology  and  anatomy ;  and  for  thirty  years  he  was  pro- 
fessor of  international  law  at  Tung  Wen  College.  In. 
appreciation  of  his  service,  the  government  made  him  a 
mandarin  at  first  of  the  third  rank,  then  of  the  second.  Li 
Plung  Chang  was  the  firm  friend  of  new  education  in 
China.  His  own  sons  were  tutored  by  that  eminently  wise 
educator  who  now  presides  over  Tien  Tsin  University; 
whose  privilege  it  has  been  to  organize  a  modern  graded 
school  system  leading  up  to  the  university,  in  the  metro- 
politan province, —  so  creating  a  model  to  be  copied 
throughout  the  empire. 

The  schools  planted  by  Occidental  philanthropists  in 
China  now  enroll  about  thirty-five  thousand  pupils  in  their 
various  grades.  This  may  be  increased  by  a  pi'O  rata  esti- 
mate of  seventy-five  thousand  village  day  pupils,  if  such 
schools  in  China  enroll  as  many  as  they  average  in  the 
other  fields  of  the  Orient. 

In  1860  the  government  established  two  naval  schools; 
and  in  1885  a  military  school  and  medical  school.  Since 
1887,  the  civil  service  examinations  have  been  slightly  modi- 
fied by  the  theoretical  introduction  of  a  modicum  of  modern 
science  and  essays  upon  the  government  and  history  of 
China  and  of  the  western  nations;  in  practice,  however,  an 
optional  in  mathematics  appears  to  have  been  the  only 
modification  prior  to  1900. 


148  CHINESE  EDUCATION. 

Since  the  coming  in  of  the  new  century,  saj^s  President 
Charles  D.  Tenney,  of  Tien  Tsin  university,  who  is  acting 
as  Educational  Commissioner  for  the  Chinese  government 
in  placing  students  in  the  higher  institutions  of  Eng- 
land and  America,  there  has  been  a  most  earnest  move- 
ment for  a  general  improvement  in  educational  matters, 
and  the  entire  system  has  been  thoroughly  reorganized.  In 
1905,  an  imperial  edict  directed  the  opening  of  new  schools 
throughout  the  empire  to  give  instruction  in  the  topics 
required  by  Western  systems  of  education,  and  the  prepar- 
ation of  appropriate  text-books;  the  decree  further  direct- 
ing that  the  same  rewards  be  given  in  these  modern  schools 
of  learning  as  have  hitherto  been  granted  only  to  the  old 
style  literary  competitions.  So  in  less  than  a  score  of  years 
this  system  is  changed,  which  has  been  such  an  amazing 
power  in  the  empire  during  so  many  ages. 

The  new  government  schools  now  enroll  a  hundred  and 
ten  thousand  pupils  in  the  metropolitan  province.  And 
within  a  year  the  ladies  of  Pekin  have  opened  educational 
work  for  girls. 

Postal  and  telegraphic  service  upon  an  extended  scale 
has  been  established  by  the  customs  department,  which  has 
made  easy  the  distribution  of  news  and  of  books.  Newspa- 
pers are  springing  up  everj^where.  Eager  young  men  in 
great  numbers  have  gone  to  Japan  to  study.  And  every- 
where the  Japanese,  who  understand  the  language  and  the 
people,  are  entering  in,  as  merchants,  as  soldiers,  and  nota- 
bly as  teachers.  So  the  old  social  order  of  one-fourth  of 
the  human  race  is,  little  by  little,  changing. 

Yet  hundreds  of  millions  of  people  can  be  reached  but 
slowly,  and  the  modern  nation,  that  is  to  be,  will  be  evolved 
only  through  the  disturbed  on-going  of  years  and  of 
generations. 

One  of  the  conditions  that  must  retard  the  general  move- 
ment, is  inherent  in  the  written  language  and  the  spoken 
dialects.  The  primitive  ideographic  language  —  whose 
characters  express  ideas  rather  than  standing  for  letters  or 


A  NEW  ERA.  149 

syllables  based  on  the  sounds  of  a  spoken  language, —  is 
quite  unfitted  to  meet  the  exigency  of  representing  the 
varied  activities  of  western  civilization,  based  as  so  many 
of  them  are  upon  arts  and  sciences  new  to  the  world. 
Then,  too,  the  dialects  of  the  realm  are  so  diverse  that 
there  is  no  general  connection  between  the  idioms  of  dense 
populations  quite  near  each  other.  This,  however,  tends  to 
develop  communication  in  other  languages,  foreshadowing 
possible  linguistic  changes  in  the  future  which  will  make 
world-wide  learning  more  accessible  to  the  ambitious  youth 
of  the  empire.  English,  by  the  use  of  all  Europeans  in 
China,  is  the  language  of  commerce. 

The  ideas  embodied  in  the  ideographic  script  of  the  Chi- 
nese, cannot  be  expressed  phonetically;  so  that  the  ancient 
forms,  which  were  fixed  by  the  early  poets  and  sages,  will 
abide  for  all  distinctive  literary  uses. 

Of  all  foreign  influences  upon  education  in  China, 
Christian  philanthropy  has  been  first  in  the  field ;  the  Prot- 
estant missions  having  been  a  hundred  years  in  the  service 
and  the  Roman  Catholic  much  longer, —  all  far  in  advance 
of  the  general  movement  of  to-day.  If  this  work  can 
be  at  once  so  reinforced  as  to  furnish  upon  an  enlarged 
scale  not  only  a  further  diffusion  of  medical  knowledge  and 
healing,  but  the  needful  moral  education,  it  will  greatly  aid 
in  the  reorganization  and  renovation  of  the  empire. 

His  Excellency  Tuan  Fong,  the  Viceroy  of  Fukien  and 
Che  Kiang,  at  the  banquet  given  in  New  York  to  the  Chi- 
nese Imperial  High  Commission,  February,  1906,  graciously 
referred  to  the  American  missionaries  in  the  Chinese 
empire,  saying: — "We  take  pleasure  in  bearing  testimony 
to  the  part  taken  by  American  missionaries  in  promoting  the 
progress  of  the  Chinese  people.  They  have  borne  the  light 
of  Western  civilization  into  every  nook  and  corner  of  the 
empire.  The  awakening  of  China,  which  now  seems  to  be 
at  hand,  may  be  traced  in  no  small  measure  to  the  hands  of 
the  missionary.  For  this  service  you  will  find  China  not 
ungrateful."     His  Excellency,   also,  in  an  address  when 


150  MOSLEM  SCHOOLS. 

visiting  the  Mission  rooms  of  the  American  Board  in  Boston, 
referred  to  the  excellent  results  in  China  of  the  tactful, 
prudent  work  of  the  men  sent  out,  and  their  good  sense, 
saying  emphatically, — "Send  us  more  like  these  you  have 
sent." 

V. 

Educationally,  the  Mohammedans  have  been  as  much  in 
advance  of  the  Brahmans  and  Buddhists  as  they  have  been 
superior  to  them  in  ideas  that  relate  to  the  Supreme  Being. 
The  transformation  wrought  in  connection  with  the  work  of 
]\Iohammed  w^as  a  notable  instance  of  that  quickened  intel- 
lectual life  which  is  always  connected  with  a  great  religious 
impulse, —  like  that  which  visited  Europe  in  the  Reforma- 
tion of  later  centuries,  or  that  Japan  saw  upon  the  incoming 
of  the  Confucian  morality  and  semi-religious  philosophy, 
or  that  marked  the  early  triumphant  march  of  Buddhism 
through  kingdoms  and  empires.  If  the  new  fire  was  called 
Arabic,  it  was  the  steel  of  Islam  striking  the  flint  of  varied 
nationalities,  every  one  of  which  was  intellectually  superior 
to  the  newly  united  tribesmen  of  the  desert.  Awakened 
by  war,  Syria,  Persia  and  Egypt  gave  to  the  world  univer- 
sities in  which  the  new  science  was  called  Arabic  and  the 
new  philosophy  was  designated  as  Moslem,  and  that  new 
scholarship  which  created  Arabic  literature.  The  civiliza- 
tion of  the  conquered  peoples  was,  however,  no  product  of 
Arabia.  In  and  of  itself,  the  Koran  stifled  scientific 
inquiry,  and  the  new  world  of  letters  flourished  through  no 
genius  of  the  Prophet,  and  in  spite  of  the  limitations  he 
imposed.^  Yet  there  opened  to  the  new  Moslem  peoples  a 
new  era,  chara<3terized  by  a  unique  system  of  jurisprudence 
based  nominally  or  really  upon  the  Koran,  a  system  of  the- 

Wide  The  Problems  of  Mohammedanism,  a  paper  by  Duncan 
Black  Macdonald,  LL.  D.,  read  before  the  Mohammedan  Section 
of  the  International  Congress  of  Arts  and  Science  at  St.  Louis, 
September  23,  1904;  published  in  the  Hartford  Seminary  Record, 
pp.  86-89. 


STUDY  OF  THE  KORAN.  151 

ology,  grammatical  and  lexicographical  studies,  poetry  and 
romance,    the   introduction   of    Greek   learning,    historical 
treatises,  and  works  upon  geography,  astronomy,  and  math- 
ematics,—  all  these  surounding  their  Prophet  as  the  central 
figure ;  and  to  the  admiring  nations,  dazed  and  enslaved  by 
the  arms  of  Islam,  Mohammed  appeared  to  be  as  helpful  to 
the  human  intellect  as  to  the   spiritual  nature   of  man. 
Amid  the  Occidental  nations  of  to-day,  however,  it  is  not 
easy  to  appreciate  the  vast  quickening  of  Oriental  life  that 
followed  the  triumphant  progress  of  the  arms  of  Islam,  in 
the  centuries  preceding  the  Norman  conquest  of  England. 
And  even  if  the  great  Arabian  civilization,  with  its  art^ 
its  science,  its  literature,  was  finally  narrowed  to  the  limita- 
tions of  the  Koran,  it  is  greatly  to  the  credit  of  Islam  that 
its  religious  faith  has  never  failed  to  look  constantly  toward 
extension  through  teachers  as  well  as  warriors,  those  imbued 
at  least  with  the  Prophet 's  knowledge  and  something  of  his 
spirit.     The  ten  thousand  Moslem  students  at  Cairo  to-day 
have  come  from  the  JMalay  peninsula,  from  India,  Persia^ 
Zanzibar,  Algiers,  Morocco,  and  some  have  crossed  Africa 
on  foot  from  the  West  Coast.     ]\Iany  are  too  poor  to  pay 
fees:   and  the  three  hundred  instructors  bed  and  board 
cheaply,  with  little  more  than  the  fare  of  the  students  — 
coarse  bread,  a  blanket  and  a  floor.     Their  zeal  justifies  the 
ancient  Mohammedan  maxims :    "To  learn  to  read  is  worth 
more    than    fasting,    to    teach    it    more    meritorious   than 
prayer;"  "The  ink  of  the  scholar  is  more  precious  than  the 
blood  of  the  martyr." 

Although  it  is  true  that  in  more  than  two-thirds  of  the 
Moslem  world  at  this  hour  the  common  education  is,  at  its 
best,  not  other  than  the  study  of  the  Koran  and  knowledge 
enough  to  read  and  write  its  text  —  and  this  was  all  that 
could  be  found  in  the  Turkish  Empire  when  the  educational 
philanthropists  of  America  first  went  there, —  yet  through 
the  competition  of  Christian  education,  based  upon  modern 
principles,  the  Turkish  government  has  now  opened  graded, 
schools  in  all  the  larger  cities. 


152  CHRISTIAN  EDUCATION 

Islam  has  never  favored  the  education  of  women.^  Only 
one  out  of  every  thousand  of  the  Hindu  ]\Ioslem  women  in 
the  Bengal  Presidency  can  read  or  write.  Of  men,  only 
six  out  of  a  hundred  can  read  in  Mohammedan  India. 
Within  a  decade,  Gaza  in  Syria,  with  a  Moslem  population 
of  thirty  thousand,  had  no  native  instruction  whatever  for 
women.  The  ignorance  of  many  communities  at  large,  in 
the  Turkish  Empire,  can  with  difficulty  be  matched  among 
African  tribes,  although  the  women  are  in  native  ability 
the  peers  of  their  sisters  in  the  Occident.-  This  is  not  alto- 
gether due  to  Islam ;  not  a  little  of  it  relates  to  the  degener- 
ate Christian  peoples  of  the  Turkish  Empire.  Here  schools 
have  been  opened  by  Western  philanthropists.  Local  Mos- 
lem governors  have  been  as  a  rule  most  friendly.  His 
Excellency,  the  Keeper  of  the  EoUs,  recently  made  an 
admirable  address,  upon  Commencement,  at  the  Marash 
Girls '  College.  Civil  and  military  officers  of  high  rank  have 
attended  the  examinations  of  girls'  schools,  and  expressed 
their  approval.  In  one  city  of  twenty  thousand  girls  and 
women,  very  few  are  now  without  schooling,  where,  a  gen- 
eration since,  only  two  could  read.^  An  eminent  educator  in 
the  Orient  relates  that  the  old  men  at  first  looked  upon  this 
work  as  a  great  joke: — ''If  you  educate  the  girls,  the  next 
thing  you  will  want  to  do  will  be  to  educate  the  donkeys. 
A  donkey  can  learn  to  read  as  well  as  the  girls  can.  And 
there  is  just  as  much  use  in  having  a  donkey  that  can  read, 
as  to  have  a  girl  that  can  read.  There  is  nobody  that  will 
marry  a  girl  that  can  read.  She  will  think,  and  talk  back ; 
her  husband  cannot  do  anything  with  her.  We  shall  have 
our  houses  full  of  old  maids."  "But  when  the  girls 
began  to  go  to  school,  the  young  men  soon  found  it  out," 

^NoTE  BY  Professor  D.  B.  Macdoxald. —  Along  with  the  small 
number  of  literate  women  in  Islam,  there  have  been,  however, 
several  women-scholars,  even  professors  in  universities.  That  is 
part  of  the  paradox;  universities  having  flourished  in  Islam  at 
the  expense  of  the  common  school. 

^Special  correspondence.  Western  Turkey  in  Asia. 

^President  Fuller  of  Aintab. 


IN  THE  TURKISH  EMPIRE,  153 

adds  this  educator;  "and  there  is  to-day  no  fairly  educated 
girl  but  has  so  many  suitors  as  to  interfere  with  her  attempt 
to  teach  or  engage  in  anything  else  than  home  building. 
And  after  all,  Turkey  needs  Christian  homes  more  than  any- 
thing else."^ 

As  applied  to  the  Orient  the  term  "education"  must  be 
broadly  comprehensive;  not  only  relating  to  the  enlighten- 
ment of  the  understanding,  but  the  discipline  of  the  tem- 
per and  the  formation  of  manners.  "Whatever  we  teach 
or  do  not  teach,"  says  one  deserving  the  meed  of  inter- 
national fame,  the  heroic  Corinna  Shattuck  of  Oorfa,  "we 
train  the  girls  to  self-control,  which  means  very  much,  in 
the  sometimes  stormy  homes  of  the  Orient.  One  effect  of  the 
schooling  of  girls  is  this,  that  they  win  the  respect  of  their 
fathers  and  brothers,  and  have  more  freedom  to  express 
their  opinions  and  wishes  as  to  marriage  proposals.  And 
in  Protestant  families  girlhood  is  prolonged ;  it  being,  now, 
no  greater  shame  to  be  married  so  late  as  eighteen  or 
twenty,  than  so  late  as  fourteen,  twenty  years  ago.  Mar- 
riage at  twelve  was  the  old  rule ;  yet  now,  even  the  non- 
Protestants  seldom  marrj^  before  fifteen,  and  often  not  till 
twenty. ' '  Again,  says  this  queenly  woman,  who  has  devoted 
herself  for  the  love  of  God  to  making  homes  for  other 
people,  "I  notice  that  the  social  life  of  the  people  has  been 
greatly  stimulated  by  the  schools.  The  parents  travel 
between  their  widely  scattered  homes  and  the  school  towns, 
so  that  girls  now  more  frequently  marry  outside  their  own 
village."  The  village  girl  catches  a  new  idea,  a  new  life; 
a  new  world  of  religious  thought  opens  to  her,  a  new  world 
of  cleanliness  and  of  discipline.  The  fetters  of  her  mind, 
the  legacy  of  hundreds  of  years  of  ignorance  and  supersti- 
tion, drop  off.     Better  lighted  houses  follow  the  formation 

^In  President  Barrows'  Christian  Conquest  of  Asia,  pp.  57,  58 
(New  York,  1899),  there  is  cited  the  testimony  of  a  Syrian  Mos- 
lem, who  said  to  the  teacher  of  a  Christian  school:  "You  have 
trained  my  wife  well.  I  have  been  in  all  kinds  of  iniquity;  when 
I  married  her,  I  expected  to  beat  my  wife,  and  then  divorce  her. 
But  this  girl  has  won  my  love,  and  I  have  no  other  wife." 


154  CHRISTIAN  EDUCATION 

of  reading  habits,  and  the  neighbors  who  cannot  read  follow 
the  fashion.  And  if  they  do  not  see  to  read,  they  at  least  see 
the  dirt,  and  they  fall  to  and  clean  up  their  rooms.  And  if 
there  is  a  window,  they  open  it  and  let  in  pure  air.  Forty 
odd  years  ago  there  was  not  a  glass  window  in  Aintab. 
Forty  thousand  people  lived,  for  the  most  part,  in  the  dark 
and  the  dirt.  If  Christian  philanthropists  have  carried  no 
other  light  to  Turkey  than  "lights"  of  window-glass,  they 
deserve  well  of  humanity.  The  outward  appearance  of  the 
towns  and  villages  has  appreciably  changed  through  the 
improvements  introduced  by  the  Christian  educators  who 
have  made  their  homes  in  the  empire.  "Mothers  who  had 
a  girlhood  and  have  been  educated,"  says  one  of  them, 
"straighten  out  the  crooked  and  intensify  the  right." 
"Husbands  begin  to  be  considerate  of  their  wives,  and 
wives  of  their  husbands.  Hands  once  indifferent,  if  not 
cruel,  now  reach  out  in  helpful  ministration  to  the  sick  and 
the  poor."  This  work,  initiated  by  those  who  have  trav- 
ersed several  thousands  of  miles  in  order  to  be  in  a  position 
to  do  it,  leads  the  people  to  ask :  ' '  Who  of  our  own  ever  so 
cared  for  us  before?" 

These  sociological  workers  are  American,  and  their  col- 
leges for  young  men  are  by  far  the  best  institutions  in  Tur- 
key. The  graduates  of  Robert  College^  at  Constantinople 
occupy  government  positions  in  Bulgaria  and  Roumelia. 
The  colleges  in  Asia  occupy  strategic  points  to  which  the 
students  come  from  distances  of  two,  five,  or  eight  days* 
journey.  Here  the  text-books  of  experienced  Occidental 
educators  are  used.     The  Turkish  minister  of  public  instruc- 

Tounded  by  Cyrus  Hamlin,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.,  it  bears  the  name 
of  Mr.  Christopher  Robert,  of  New  York,  who  contributed  one  half 
the  cost  of  its  building.  The  real  estate  is  held  upon  a  deed 
directly  from  the  Sultan.  The  fire-proof  edifice  is  placed  under 
the  protection  of  the  United  States;  having  the  right  to  fly  the 
stars  and  stripes  over  the  Bosphorus.  Armenians,  Bulgarians, 
and  Greeks,  in  nearly  equal  numbers,  constitute  the  average  of 
two  hundred  students,  whose  educational  standing  is  that  of 
classes  in  the  smaller  New  England  colleges. 


IN  THE  TURKISH  EMPIRE.  15S 

tion  has  introduced  into  the  schools  of  the  empire  the  ele- 
mentary mathematical  books  prepared  by  Dr.  Hamlin  of 
Crimean  fame.  The  far-reaching  character  of  this  work  is 
seen  in  the  Syrian  Protestant  College  at  Beyroot,  where  the 
players  upon  the  athletic  field  are  from  Egypt,  from  Persia, 
from  the  Greek  Islands,  from  Damascus  or  Lebanon.  Here 
Catholics  Greek  and  Roman,  Druses,  Armenians,  Copts, 
Jews,  Protestants,  and  sons  of  Islam,  are  learning  the  prin- 
ciples of  ethics,  truth,  honesty,  justice,  politeness,  ideals  in 
business  life,  the  fundamental  principles  of  society.  These 
men  have  found  government  positions  in  Syria  and  Egypt^ 
in  hospitals,  in  the  Egyptian  army,  in  the  Soudan,  and 
three  have  become  bishops  in  the  Greek  Church. 

There  were  once  great  crusades  to  the  lands  of  the  Turks.. 
During  two  hundred  years  all  Christendom  was  shaken  by 
the  tread  of  martial  hosts  moving  eastward.  During  the 
past  two  generations  there  has  been  every  way  a  more 
notable  movement :  it  has  been  the  peaceful  occupation  of 
different  quarters  of  the  Turkish  Empire  by  the  crusaders^ 
of  a  great  moral  force,  who  have  crossed  several  thousands 
of  miles  of  blue  water  for  the  love  of  God  and  the  love  of 
the  Turkish  Empire,  and  who  have,  all  told,  furnished  an. 
average  of  two  years'  schooling  to  two  hundred  thousand 
young  people  in  Christian  schools.  It  seems  likely  that  this 
means  a  permanent  uplift  in  the  condition  of  at  least  a 
hundred  thousand  homes.  There  are,  according  to  Dr.  Jes- 
sup,  in  the  Ottoman  Empire  to-day  nearly  nine  hundred 
Protestant  schools  with  more  than  forty-three  thousand 
pupils;  the  colleges  enroll  more  than  twelve  hundred  stu- 
dents. Eighteen  hundred  native  assistants  are  engaged  in 
Christian  work.  There  are  not  less  than  five  hundred 
American  missionaries  in  the  open  field,  leading  in  this 
crusade.  And  there  are  supporting  this  distinctive  work^ 
more  than  a  million  members  of  Christian  churches  in 
America.  Without  reward  or  hope  of  reward  from  earthly 
kings  or  kingdoms,  this  great  body  of  philanthropists 
have  put  into  this  crusade  more  than  ten  millions  of  dol- 


156  CHINESE  EDUCATION 

lars  of  hard-earned  money,  the  gifts,  the  most  of  it,  of 
relatively  poor  people,  rich  in  their  purpose  to  make  this 
world  over  again,  so  far  forth  as  to  bless  the  nations  with 
good  homes.^  Those  who  are  thoughtful  students  of  the 
world's  progress  cannot  easily  express  their  appreciation 
of  this  inestimable  good,  wrought  by  those  who  reside  in 
foreign  parts  perhaps  half  a  hundred  years,  with  no  other 
purpose  than  to  elevate  the  social  and  moral  condition  of 
another  nationality.- 

YI. 

Even  if  Christianity  has  not  advanced  rapidly  in  its  cen- 
turies of  educational  development,  it  has  finally  proved 
itself  not  only  a  progressive  power  but  the  present  educa- 
tional leader  of  the  world;  certainly  so  in  the  realms  of 
Brahma  and  Buddha,  of  Confucius  and  Islam.  As  the 
legitimate  heir  of  the  great  ideal  of  a  Kingdom  of  Divine 
Love  upon  earth  —  in  all  the  ages  of  its  promise,  its  prep- 
.aration,  its  continuous  moving  forward  toward  fulfilment, — 
Christianity  has  not  only  aided  the  unfolding  intellectual 
powers  of  certain  virile  backward  races,  but  has  looked  on 
all  men  as  of  one  blood  and  the  most  savage  stock  as  capa- 
ble of  being  ingrafted  with  such  principles  of  social  life  as 
■conduce  to  a  wholesale  fruitage.  To  this  end,  Christian 
philanthropists  take  the  results  of  ages  of  culture  and  bear 
them  throughout  the  world,  making  over  to  stranger  nations 
their  own  heritage  of  accumulated  knowledge.  This  they 
do  for  the  larger  Christ  —  the  larger  human  conception  of 
his  beneficent  work :  this  they  do  for  the  greater  Church,  for 
the  broader,  deeper,  higher  conception  of  the  divine  plan  in 

^The  author  is  indebted  to  Mr.  C.  N.  Chapln  of  Boston  for  ser- 
vice in  compiling  statistics  of  American  ptiilanthropic  worli  in 
the  Turkish  empire. 

*That  this  Christian  sociological  work  upon  a  national  scale 
should  have  been  seriously  interrupted  by  Moslem  mobs  and  mas- 
sacres in  recent  years  is  not  perhaps  to  be  wondered  at.  The 
very  theory  of  Islam  demands  it. 


AS  A  SOCIAL  POWER.  157 

all  human  life.  Historically,  the  clerical  profession  was  once 
the  only  educated  calling  in  Europe ;  the  medical  and  legal 
professions  of  to-day,  the  schoolmaster's  service,  and  what 
we  should  now  call  the  editorial  function,  were  all  carried 
on  by  the  clergyman,  so  far  as  they  existed  in  the  earlier 
age.  The  State  to-day  is  debtor  to  the  Church  of  yesterday. 
The  teachers,  physicians,  counsellors,  jurists,  statesmen, 
journalists,  men  of  affairs,  administrators,  philanthropists, 
of  modern  times,  are  but  following  a  divine  call  in  the  larger 
apprehension  of  Christ  and  his  beneficent  work  as  applied 
to  society,  and  that  organized  Christianity  which  insists, 
upon  practical  righteousness  in  every  calling. 

Manliness  in  merchandising,  skill  in  healing,  the  protec- 
tion of  liberty  by  law,  purity  in  politics,  international  right 
dealing,  and  friendliness  to  the  average  man,  whether  he  be 
called  a  lord  or  a  laborer, —  these  are  the  aims  of  education 
in  the  modern  era,  aims  reached  through  multifarious  call- 
ings Christo  et  Ecclesiae. 

An  examination  of  the  lists  of  alumni  in  the  great  schools 
of  Christendom  show  them  to  have  been  great  on  every 
side  in  serving  Christian  society,  and  in  introducing  divine 
principles  into  the  marts  of  business. 

This  marks  the  scope  of  the  supreme  service  which  Chris- 
tianity is  seeking  to  render  the  non-Christian  nations  and 
peoples  at  this  hour.  Everywhere  it  is  planting  its  univer- 
sities, in  India,  in  Japan,  in  China,  in  the  Turkish  Empire. 
These  universities  exist  to  advance  science,  to  keep  alive 
philosophy  and  poetry,  to  draw  out  and  cultivate  the  high- 
est powers  of  the  human  mind;  and  this  science  is  always 
face  to  face  with  God;  this  philosophy  brings  all  its  issues 
into  the  one  word  —  duty ;  this  poetry  has  its  culmination 
in  a  hymn  of  praise ;  and  in  the  drawing  out  of  the  highest 
powers  of  the  human  mind  a  prayer  —  man  face  to  face 
with  God  —  is  the  transcendent  effort  of  intelligence.^ 

*Por  this  sentence,  compare  the  citation  from  President  Eliot, 
of  Harvard,  in  Dr.  Alexander  McKenzie's  Lowell  Lectures, —  The 
Divine  Force  in  the  Life  of  the  World,  p.  297.     Boston,  1899. 


158  MORAL  EDUCATION. 

All  education  is  ultimately  related  to  moral  life.  The 
liuman  mind  made  in  the  divine  image  cannot  be  awakened 
and  disciplined  without  arousing  a  sense  of  one's  own  per- 
sonal dignity  as  related  to  Infinite  Intelligence.  Llere 
knowledge  of  the  multiplication  table  does  not  effect  the 
reformation  of  man.  The  creation  of  the  social  man  is 
possible  only  through  the  knowledge  of  men  as  morally 
inter-related.  It  is,  therefore,  undeniable  that  the  underly- 
ing motive  for  all  this  altruistic  education,  on  the  part  of 
Christendom,  is  religious.  If  there  were  not  intensity  of 
conviction  on  this  point,  the  men  and  women  w^ould  not  go. 
Not  else  would  JMoffat  and  Livingston,  John  Paton,  and 
scores  of  the  consecrated  sons  of  Scotia  —  that  fruitful 
mother  of  Christian  heroes  —  have  endured  burning  heats 
and  martyrdoms  for  God  and  humanity.  The  ending  of  all 
knowledge,  said  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  is  virtuous  action. 
There  is  no  knowdedge  of  use  without  this  ending.  Dr. 
Seeland  says  that  the  experiment  has  been  made  for  half  a 
century  to  raise  the  Kirghiz  by  education  to  the  level  of 
•civilization,  and  that  it  cannot  be  done.^  Eminent  Quaker 
philanthropists  experimented  on  the  American  Indians  for 
years,  giving  them  education  as  a  civilizing  force ;  it  proved 
utterly  in  vain :  they  had  to  introduce  Christianity.^  This 
agrees  with  Herbert  Spencer,  who,  when  in  America  some 
years  ago,  was  currently  reported  as  saying,  in  reply  to  a 
question  whether  the  diffusion  of  knowledge  would  fit  men 
for  free  institutions, — "No;  it  is  essentially  a  question  of 
character,  only  in  a  secondary  degree  a  question  of  educa- 
tion ;  the  idea  that  mere  education  is  a  panacea  for  political 
evils  is  a  universal  delusion. ' '  Yet  no  permanent  upbuild- 
ing of  Christian  society  is  possible  except  through  develop- 

^The  doctor  is  the  chief  of  the  Russian  Army  Medical  Depart- 
ment, long  dwelling  among  the  Kirghiz.—  Lansdell's  Chinese  Cen- 
tral Asia,  II,  pp.  257,  258. 

^Christian  Missions.  By  Julius  H.  Seelye,  D.  D.,  President  of 
Amherst  College,  p.  39.  New  York,  1876.  The  reference  is  to 
"Evidence  on  the  Aborigines,"  before  the  House  of  Commons, 
1833-'34,  p.  187. 


BORNEO.  159 

ing  intellectual  force,  and  the  training  of  youth:  this  was 
proved  by  the  experience  of  the  American  Board  in  the 
Hawaiian  Islands,  and  in  their  earlier  work  in  India.^ 

It  was  educational  work,  in  its  highest  sense,  which  took 
Bishop  McDougal  to  the  Dyaks  of  Borneo.  Three  human 
heads,  fresh  killed  for  the  occasion,  decorated  the  table  at 
the  feast  made  in  his  honor :  yet  the  Dyaks  believed  in  God, 
—  they  said  that  He  slept  and  cared  nothing  for  men. 
When  persuaded  that  God  was  a  Father,  they  listened,  and 
ceased  to  propitiate  evil  spirits  by  removing  the  head  of 
any  one  who  might  step  out  of  the  usual  path.  Never  were 
a  people  more  ready  to  receive  moral  instruction,  and  to 
obey  it.  The  sober  missionary  annals  of  the  Church  of 
England  thrill  the  reader,  as  if  a  strange,  w^ild  story  of 
magical  transformation, —  a  radically  changed  life  in  sav- 
agery, wrought  through  their  new  ideas  of  God.  Thanks  to 
the  great  mother  heart  of  the  Church  of  England  which  has 
sought  in  every  corner  to  find  the  world 's  neglected  children, 
the  seeds  of  truth  caught  and  sprang  up  on  every  side,  even 
before  the  arrival  of  more  teachers.  The  Orang  Kaya 
taught  the  Updop  Dyaks,  and  this  led  other  villages  to  ask 
for  teachers.  The  chief  of  the  Skerang  Dyaks  conversed 
cautiously  with  the  teacher,  then  said:  "I  have  tried  birds, 
and  I  have  tried  spirits.  I  have  listened  to  the  voices  of  the 
one,  and  have  attended  to  the  demands  of  the  other,  and 
made  offerings  to  them,  but  I  never  could  see  that  I  gained 
any  benefit  from  them,  and  now  I  shall  have  no  more  to  do 
with  them.  I  shall  become  a  Christian. "  So  welcome  were 
the  words  from  over  the  sea,  that  the  Dyaks  of  Lundu  upon 
building  a  home  for  a  teacher,  produced  copies  of  ele- 
mentary moral  instruction,  saying,  ' '  These  are  worth  more 
than  any  wages  he  can  give  us."-  And  now,  says  Horna- 
day  the  traveler,  nowhere  in  the  world  is  life  and  property 

^Report  of  Annual  Meeting,  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  Madison,  1894: 
the  Address  of  Secretary  N.  G.  Clark:  also  Address  of  Secretary 
Creegtin. 

digest  of  Records  of  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel,  p.  682   (1892);   pp.  689,  690,  692   (1893).     London. 


160  MORAL   EDUCATION 

more  securely  sacred  than   among  the   once   fierce   head 
hunters. 

In  the  South  Seas,  the  cruel  islanders  were  actuated  by 
moral  ideas  that  needed  rectifying;  and  when  the  tribes 
once  trusted  the  British  philanthropists  who  told  them  what 
was  better,  they  did  better.  When  the  Friendly  Islanders,, 
who  supposed  that  their  earthquakes  were  produced  by  a 
Polynesian  Atlas  who  shifted  the  globe  from  one  shoulder 
to  the  other,  found  out  that  they  were  probably  mistaken, 
they  reasoned  at  once  that  they  might  also  be  mistaken  in 
idol  worship.  They  were  led  to  this  by  native  evangelists 
from  other  islands,  before  they  saw  teachers  from  England. 
They  then  gathered  ten  thousand  children,  and  placed  them 
in  Christian  schools.  And  their  king  gave  a  well  ordered 
government  upon  Christian  principles.  It  is  estimated^ 
that  the  evangelizing  of  three  hundred  and  fifty  of  the 
South  Sea  islands  cost  $10,000,000,  paid  mostly  by  the 
average  man  in  Great  Britain.  It  is  a  good  illustration  of 
the  altruistic  spirit  of  modern  Christianity.  The  British 
Encyclopedia  says  that,  in  respect  to  reading  and  writing, 
and  the  elements  of  arithmetic,  education  in  Polynesia  is 
more  general  than  in  the  British  Isles;  then,  too,  there  are 
advanced  schools  and  colleges  in  the  larger  groups.  No 
portion  of  Christendom  is  better  supplied  with  religious 
instruction  than  the  Christianized  islands  of  Polynesia,  says 
the  encj'clopedic  authority;  and,  taking  into  consideration 
the  short  time  they  have  been  under  Christian  influence, 
they  compare  favorably  with  any  Christian  people  in  the 
world.  In  their  relation  to  moral  education,  the  ecclesias- 
tical affiliations  of  the  people  afford  a  well-compacted  body 
of  public  opinion,  created  in  these  lately  savage  lands,  on. 
the  side  of  good  government  and  in  favor  of  the  ten  com- 
mandments, to  say  nothing  of  a  rigid  determination  formed 
by  the  natives,  to  carry  their  new  notions  of  what  life  is 
for  to  the  islands  where  idolatry^  theft,  treachery,  murder, 

'By  an  Australian  clergyman,  with  easily  obtainable  statistics 
at  hand. 


IN    NON-CHRISTIAN   LANDS.  161 

and  domestic  degradation  are  still  the  rule  and  not  the 
exception.  The  population,  about  half  that  of  Australia, 
has  already  forgotten  the  old  heathen  rites,  and  they  are 
busy  with  commerce  and  agriculture.  Twenty-seven  of 
the  most  important  groups  of  islands  are  now  politically 
allied  to  Christian  powers,  and  are  reckoned  as  a  part  of 
Christendom.  This  story  of  social  revolution  through  the 
educative  power  of  new  ideas  is  to  be  found  in  a  library  of 
some  sixty  volumes,  many  of  which  are  of  great  merit  and 
well  illustrated.  Is  not  he  indeed  an  ill-educated  person, 
who  knows  all  about  the  atolls,  the  tropical  butterflies,  and 
the  differences  in  war  clubs  and  canoes,  who  has  no  knowl- 
edge of  the  mighty  domestic,  social,  and  commercial  changes 
wrought  by  putting  Christian  ideas  into  the  heads  of 
Papuan,  the  Sawaiori,  and  the  Tarapon  peoples  of  the 
Pacific  Island  world, —  that  mighty  work  which  makes 
commerce  the  safer,  marine  insurance  the  cheaper,  and 
which  leads  the  shipwrecked  seamen  to  breathe  the  easier 
when  they  see  a  church  rising  amid  the  palms. 

The  indefatigable  philanthropists  of  Christendom  are 
educating  to-day  in  non-Christian  lands  a  great  many  more 
pupils^  than  the  average  school  attendance  of  New  Eng- 
land ;  two-thirds  of  them  being  trained  by  British  teachers. 
Most  of  these  pupils  are  of  good  racial  stock,  capable  of 
holding  their  oM^n  with  the  world.  The  social  possibilities 
of  this  movement  will  be  apparent  when  it  is  considered 
that  the  number  of  these  pupils  is  more  than  eight  times 
the  number  of  the  original  emigrants  from  their  home  land 
to  New  England  some  seven  or  eight  generations  since. 
There  are  one-tenth  more  pupils  of  non-Christian  realms 
now  annually  taught  in  Christian  schools  than  there  were 
inhabitants  of  Rome  at  the  Christian  era."  They  are  half 
as  many  as  the  people  of  England  in  the  eleventh  century. 

^Based  upoa  mission  statistics  in  Centennial  Survey  of  Foreign 
Missions,  J.  S.  Dennis. 

'The  estimate  being  that  of  Dr.  Beloch  for  A.  D.  14,  in  Mul- 
hall's  Dictionary  of  Statistics. 
11 


162  CHRISTIAN   EDUCATION   OF   WOMEN. 

This  work,  upon  so  vast  a  scale,  is  carried  on  amid  popu- 
lations that  have  been  least  progressive,  by  those  most 
advanced;  and  it  can  but  mark  a  crisis  in  social  history, 
affecting  the  destiny  of  the  future  of  mankind.  The  very 
dog-trainers  and  stock-breeders  and  bird-fanciers  of  the 
world  must  know  this :  it  pertains  to  the  principle  of  hered- 
ity; it  will  ultimately  change  the  face  of  society  upon 
extended  areas  of  our  planetary  surface. 

Three  points  may  now  be  named,  which,  from  an  educa- 
tional point  of  view,  will  greatly  affect  the  social  evolution 
of  mankind  in  future  ages. 

One  relates  to  the  future  improved  status  of  womanhood 
throughout  the  world.  In  the  preceding  chapter,  that  upon 
Home  Building,  much  was  said  of  the  condition  of  woman- 
hood in  non-Christian  lands.  In  its  influence  upon  the 
future,  it  is  to  be  added  that  school  girls  constitute  one- 
third  of  the  pupils  just  referred  to:  this  marks  an  appre- 
ciable beginning  of  changed  conditions.  The  improvement 
also  will  be  accelerated  by  the  fact  that  of  the  total  number 
of  philanthropic  Christian  workers  who  are  promoting  secu- 
lar and  moral  education  in  non-Christian  lands,  two-fifths 
are  women,  working  specially  among  w^omen.  It  is  also 
worthy  of  note  that,  of  the  philanthropic  women  workers 
of  Christendom  now  engaged  in  uplifting  womanhood  in 
non-Christian  realms  throughout  the  world,  more  than 
ninety-three  per  cent,  of  the  total  number  are  of  that  Ger- 
manic stock,  which  was  alluded  to  in  the  preceding  chapter 
as  being  most  influential  in  the  social  evolution  of  Chris- 
tendom. It  is,  also,  to  be  noted  that  the  education  of 
women  is  recent  in  Christendom,  and  totally  neglected  in 
non-Christendom:  by  the  time  the  non-Christian  women 
of  the  world  are  generally  educated,  the  leadership  of 
highly-educated  women  of  altruistic  spirit,  in  Christendom, 
will  have  acquired  still  greater  social  force.^ 

Another  thing  which  has  appeared,  quite  incidentally,  in 

*The  statistics  in  this  paragraph  are  based  upon  tables  in  Den- 
nis' Centennial  Survey. 


NATIONAL  LEADERSHIP.  163 

this  chapter,  is  the  relative  inferiority  of  the  intellectual 
and  moral  standards  maintained  by  certain  non-Christian 
peoples.  The  world's  leadersliip  has  already  been  acquired 
by  those  Christian  nations  which  have  during  many  ages 
been  making  the  most  of  their  intellectual  and  moral  endow- 
ments,—  enlarging  the  resources  of  kingdoms  and  increas- 
ing the  economic  power  of  endless  generations.  One 
curious  effect  of  this  appears  in  summing  up  the  population 
of  the  little  island  of  Great  Britain ;  it  outranks  China, — 
the  British  home  steam  power  is  equal  to  the  labor  of  four 
hundred  millions  of  men.  The  effect  is  the  same  as  if  men 
had  been  brought  in  from  other  worlds,  or  the  genii  of  the 
air,  to  work  in  English  factories  to  clothe  this  planet  better. 
As,  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  the  other  animals  stand 
no  chance  with  man,  so  the  uneducated  populations  of 
other  countries  stand  no  chance  wdth  educated  Christendom. 
Knowledge  is  power :  and  the  nations  that  will  not  take  the 
hint,  and  the  help  of  the  hour  held  out  to  them  by  Christian 
philanthropists  looking  toward  promoting  the  intellectual 
and  moral  education  of  their  youth,  will  certainly  perish 
in  the  ultimate  struggle  for  existence.  They  must  adapt 
themselves  to  the  demands  of  this  age,  or  be  forever  left  in 
the  race  by  the  advance  of  Christendom. 

For  another  point :  it  is  a  fact  which  augurs  well  for  the 
future  of  mankind  that  great  bodies  of  men,  now  numbered 
by  scores  of  millions  in  Christendom,  are  actuated  by  gen- 
erous ideas  toward  their  fellow  men  in  other  lands,  seeking 
to  improve  their  intellectual  and  social  condition,  both  now 
and  as  related  to  the  after  ages  of  the  world.  And  the 
nations  that  have  the  most  vitality  in  doing  this,  the  most 
enterprise  to  get  up  and  go  abroad  on  moral  errands  worth 
going  for,  will  certainly  be  the  nations  of  paramount  power 
in  the  future.  The  physical  energy  of  China  is  admirable ; 
yet  the  Chinese  system  of  intellectual  and  moral  education, 
the  Confucian-Taoist-Buddhist  philosophy  of  life  —  as  the 
ages  go  by  —  will  become  absolutely  extinct  unless  it  has 
vitality  enough  to  propagate  itself  in  philanthropic  enter- 


164  CHRISTIAN  EDUCATION. 

prises.  The  Hindu  faith  cannot  maintain  itself  on  this 
globe  unless  it  has  power  to  renovate  India,  and  to  reach 
into  other  climes  as  a  beneficent  power  —  and  to  thrive  upon 
other  continents.  And  so  we  might  go  the  rounds.  That 
system  is  doomed  by  moral  law  —  as  certain  in  its  outwork- 
ing as  natural  law  —  which  has  not  its  seed  in  itself,  with 
power  to  bear  fruit  in  all  realms  in  all  ages.  In  this  era  of 
time,  the  words  of  Napoleon  are  true  —  as  to  intellectual 
and  moral  force  in  the  social  evolution  of  mankind  —  that 
the  army  which  remains  in  its  entrenchments  is  beaten. 


CHAPTER  FIVE  :  CONTRASTS  IN  LITERATURE. 

The  contribution  of  any  people  in  literary  form  to  the 
world's  thought  is  the  chief  index  of  their  intellectual 
power,  and  the  ultimate  measure  of  their  sociological  value 
to  the  future  of  mankind.  The  literary  productiveness 
of  the  great  peoples  of  India,  China,  Japan  and  Arabia 
is  of  stupendous  promise  when  viewed  from  the  standpoint 
of  social  evolution.  Through  the  study  of  comparative  lit- 
erature, this  is  easily  verified.  No  student  of  Western 
learning  can  examine  the  evidences  of  mental  activity  dur- 
ing hoary  centuries,  in  the  formation  of  the  Sanskrit,  Pali, 
Chinese,  Japanese  and  Arabic  literatures,  without  the 
uprising  of  a  great  hope  and  a  well  defined  expectation  con- 
cerning these  virile  peoples,  and  the  ages  to  come,  in  their 
unfolding  intellectual  life,  that  will  ultimately  prove  most 
helpful  to  the  whole  human  race.  Do  not  the  burdened 
libraries  of  Christendom  show  the  immaturity  and  slow 
growth  of  what  is  styled  "learning"?  Give  but  time 
enough,  and  the  races,  that  are  sometimes  called  "back- 
ward," will  contribute  their  full  share  to  the  world's 
thought. 

Is  not  Christendom  provincial?  Does  the  thrilling  life 
of  a  thousand  millions  of  people  outside  of  it  enter  little 
into  the  popular  "Christian"  imagination?  So,  too,  in. 
man's  littleness,  the  purest  aristocracy  upon  the  globe,  the 
Brahman,  is  provincial:  Confucianists  and  Moslems  are 
provincial.  Will  it  not  indeed  advance  the  intellectual  evo- 
lution of  man,  when  the  great  races  and  great  religions 
become  so  far  acquainted  as  to  study  each  other's  litera- 
ture ?  In  Christendom,  the  literary  output  of  two-thirds  of 
mankind  is  popularly  believed  to  consist  almost  solely  of  a 
few  so  called  sacred  books,  and  even  of  these  there  is  no 
popular  knowledge  as  to  their  distinctive  contents.  Yet  the 
intellectual  creations  of  the  non-Christian  peoples  in  poetry. 


166  SANSKRIT  LITERATURE. 

romance,  philosophy,  in  historical  perspective,  in  biographi- 
cal studies  in  natural  science,  indicate  an  amazing  activity 
that  elevates  at  once  our  conceptions  of  their  power  to  grap- 
ple with  religious  problems  and  produce  unique  literatures 
fitted  to  the  genius  of  every  nation.  Among  all  the  changes 
in  Christendom  wrought  in  recent  years,  what  is  more  help- 
ful and  hopeful  than  the  discovery  of  the  fundamental 
tenets  of  two-thirds  of  the  human  race  to  popular  appre- 
hension after  so  many  dark  and  silent  centuries,  by  which 
it  is  now  possible  to  learn  the  mighty  moral  truths  and  pos- 
sible intellectual  errors  which  underlie  the  social  state  in 
non-Christian  lands.^ 

If  that  man  is  ill-educated  who  knows  no  language  but 
his  own,  then  he  must  be  counted  as  a  mere  zealot  in  reli- 
gion, who  in  the  twentieth  century  does  not  care  to  entertain 
cosmic  views  and  know  about  the  religious  faith  held  by  the 
great  masses  of  those  to  whom  he  would  extend  a  brother's 
greeting.  "We  have  always  something  to  learn,"  says 
James  Martineau,  "until  we  have  traced  the  beliefs,  which 
we  disown  and  others  trust,  up  to  their  inmost  seat  in 
human  nature;  and  detected  what  good  and  holy  thing  it 
is  which  they  poorly  struggle  to  express." 

I. 

Hinduism  has  two  staying  features,  the  institution  of 
caste,  and  the  national  Sacred  Books;-  were  either  to  be 
utterly  undermined,  the  religion  would  fall.  These  books, 
as  living  authorities  with  the  populace  of  to-day,  are  con- 
stantly appealed  to  by  the  Hindus,  as  indicating  what  is 
definitely  fixed ;  they  do  not  appeal  to  mere  traditions.     The 

^Will  not  future  generations  in  every  land  crown  with  honor 
the  early  Western  students  of  Sanskrit,  Pali,  Chinese,  and  Ara- 
bic? They  are  in  cosmopolitan  work.  When  Professor  Max  Miil- 
ler  was  critically  ill,  the  priests  and  pundits  of  Madras  and  of 
Benares  offered  public  prayers  for  his  recovery. 

^Not  in  this  chapter,  but  in  the  next,  will  inquiry  be  made  as 
to  the  ethical  contents  of  the  Hindu  books  and  those  of  the  other 
great  races  and  religions. 


BRAHMAN  SUPREMACY.  167 

rigidly  enforced  rules  of  caste,  and  the  supremacy  of  their 
sacred  writings  stand  for  that  intellectual  domination 
which  has  been  exercised  by  the  Brahmans,  almost  without 
a  break,  since  an  early  period  of  Indian  civilization.  The 
Brahman  of  to-day  occupies  a  unique  position,  as  the  type 
of  a  purely  intellectual  aristocracy  which  is  without  a  par- 
allel in  human  history.  No  order  of  secular  nobility  has 
l)orne  sway  during  so  many  milleniums.  The  Brahman  has 
been  father  and  son;  the  Buddhist  mendicants  and  the 
monks  or  priests  of  Christendom  and  the  members  of  the 
literary  class  in  China  have  been  but  successions  of  individ- 
uals without  hereditary  power,  and  Islam  has  been  ruled 
through  the  state.  The  Brahmans  alone  by  sheer  intellect- 
ual supremacy  without  secular  power,  or  physical  force, 
have  maintained  themselves  without  putting  their  hands  to 
servile  work  during  more  than  eighty  generations.^  It  is 
not  a  case  of  one  family  doing  so,  or  of  a  few  individuals, 
but  of  a  large  body  —  a  caste  comprising  many  tribes  and 
numbering  nearly  fifteen  millions  —  who  constitute  an 
intellectual  oligarchy.^     The  Brahmans  are  often  charac- 

^Theirs  is  the  literary  occupation, —  they  are  fit  for  ofSces,  to 
act  as  clerks,  or  pundits;  they  may  be  bankers  but  not  merchants, 
nor  may  they  lease  the  land.  They  are  often  poor,  begging  for 
work  with  pen  and  books;  and  those  who  graduate  at  the  govern- 
ment schools  are  eager  to  serve  the  crown, —  to-day,  indeed, 
monopolizing  the  oflBces  in  Western  India.  Hunter's  Indian 
Empire,  p.  179,  states,  however,  that  in  many  parts  of  India  the 
Brahmans  act  as  porters,  shepherds,  cultivators,  potters  and  fish- 
ermen,—  while  others  starve  rather  than  engage  in  such  work. 

Note  by  Professor  E.  "Washburn  Hopkins. —  It  should  be  added 
that  the  various  statements  made  in  the  legal  Sutras  (c.  200 
B.  C.)  show,  at  that  early  date,  that  there  were  numerous  Brah- 
mans who  were  employed  in  all  sorts  of  occupations  just  as  they 
are  now.  In  fact,  the  legal  books  prescribe  what  a  poor  Brah- 
man should  do  "in  time  of  distress,"  showing  that  the  actual 
condition  of  the  class  was  quite  different  from  its  theoretical 
status. 

^Dennis  gives  one-twentieth  as  the  proportion  of  this  caste  to 
the  whole  population.  Christian  Missions  and  Social  Progress, 
I:  246. 


1C8  SANSKRIT  LITERATURE. 

terized  by  a  noble  aspect  in  their  walk,  and  by  such  detailed 
features  as  thin  lips,  broad  foreheads,  sharp  eyes,  faces 
that  express  their  sense  of  hereditary  superiority  undis- 
puted for  some  thousands  of  years,  and  e\ery  muscle, — 
even  to  their  long  finger  tips, —  keenly  alive  with  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  divine  incarnation.  Certain  tribes,  as  in 
Kashmir,  are  fair  and  handsome,  with  a  certain  refinement 
and  regularity  of  features.  There  has  been  no  time  for 
nearly  three  thousand  years  in  which  the  Brahmans  have 
not  claimed  for  themselves  the  intellectual  qualities  of 
Brama  or  Brahm,  the  supreme  impersonal  arranger  of  the 
universe,  while  other  castes  represent  only  inferior  quali- 
ties. As  the  ''man  of  prayer,"  the  Brahman  has  special- 
ized in  all  that  has  tended  to  maintain  a  religious  grip  on 
the  Hindus,  holding  that,  in  some  proper  sense,  all  com- 
munication between  Brahm  and  the  lower  castes  is  a 
Brahmanical  perquisite.  Through  their  sacerdotal  require- 
ments the  Brahmans  regulate  the  most  minute  details  of  the 
daily  national  life,  domestic,  social,  and  individual.  This 
is  carried  out  in  detail  by  village  residence  and  paid  service 
throughout  India.^  Brahmans  alone  have  the  right  to 
sacrifice  for  the  expiation  of  sin.  This  grip  on  India  is 
commonly  thought  to  be  religious;  it  is,  however,  but  the 
ecclesiastical  enforcing  of  conformity  to  social,  or,  more 
strictly,  caste  rules;-  this  being  the  most  essential  thing 
in  Modern  Hinduism,  that  elastic  system  by  which  the  lead- 
ing caste  a  thousand  years  ago  finally  fortified  itself 
against  all  comers.  What  any  Hindu  believes  is  not  impor- 
tant if  he  conforms  to  usages  which  ultimately  give  Brah- 
mans the  precedence  and  financial  support  of  the  other 
castes.^ 

^The  Brahman  acts  as  the  village  clerk, —  this  caste  so  keeping 
the  accounts  of  nineteen-tv/entieths  of  the  Hindu  population. 

''This  is  religious  in  the  pristine  sense,  early  forms  being  often 
ritualistic,  without  ethical  content. 

^To  this  effect  are  the  words  of  the  late  Lieutenant  Governor 
Sir  Charles  U.  Atchison:  "So  long  as  the  supremacy  of  the  priest- 
hood is  not  meddled  with,  and  the  rules  imposed  by  Brahmanism 


THE  HINDU  SCRIPTURES.  169 

The  literary  activity  of  the  Indian  mind  has  manifested 
itself  in  works  on  law,  medicine,  mathematics,  music,  rhet- 
oric and  the  drama;  in  the  elaboration  of  six  orthodox 
philosophical  systems,  and  many  heretical;  in  epics;  in 
lyrical,  descriptive,  and  didactic  poetry;  in  the  ancient 
Vedas,  the  more  modern  Shastras,  and  Puranas,  that  con- 
stitute the  authoritative  religious  literature  of  the  Hindus. 

The  Indian  Sacred  Books  of  to-day  were  transmitted 
orally  from  one  generation  of  Brahmans  to  another,  so  that 
these  sacred  men  were  living  Hindu  Bibles,  and  their  word 
was  religious  law.     The  books  are  held  as  the  exclusive 

on  the  life  and  conduct  are  observed,  it  matters  little  what  the 
personal  belief  of  the  Hindu  is,  or  under  what  form  or  name  the 
deity  is  worshipped."  To  the  same  effect,  the  late  President  Bar- 
rows, of  Oberlin,  cited  his  conversation  in  Calcutta  with  Babu 
Guru  Sen,  who  has  written:  "It  is  perfectly  optional  with  the 
Hindu  to  choose  from  any  of  the  different  creeds  with  which  the 
Sastras  abound,  or  from  any  other  creed  not  a  trace  of  which  can 
be  found  in  the  Sastras  or  any  other  book.  He  may  choose  to 
have  faith  in  a  creed  if  he  wants  a  creed,  or  to  do  without  one. 
He  may  be  an  atheist,  a  deist,  a  monotheist,  or  a  polytheist,  a 
believer  in  the  Vedas  or  Sastras,  or  be  skeptic  as  to  their  author- 
ity, and  his  position  as  a  Hindu  canuot  be  questioned  by  any  one 
on  account  of  his  beliefs  or  unbeliefs,  so  long  as  he  conforms  to 
social  rules."  (Barrows'  Christian  Conquest  of  Asia,  p.  105.)  To 
be  more  specific:  the  secretary  of  the  Christian  Literature  Society 
of  India,  Dr.  John  Murdock  of  Madras,  says  that  the  Hindu  "may 
worship  anything  in  the  Heaven  above  or  in  the  earth  beneath,  or 
nothing.  He  may  charge  God  with  the  greatest  crimes  or  he  may 
deny  his  existence.  He  may  be  guilty  of  lying,  theft,  adultery, 
murder;  but  so  long  as  he  observes  the  rules  of  his  caste,  he  may 
live  in  his  own  home  unmolested,  and  have  free  admission  to 
Hindu  temples.  But  let  him  visit  England  to  study,  let  him 
marry  a  widow,  dine  with  a  person  of  another  caste,  or  even  take 
a  glass  of  water  from  his  hand,  and,  according  to  Hinduism,  he 
is  excommunicated."  The  same  thing  in  substance  is  stated  by 
Dr.  Mitchell,  one's  belief  being  unessential  if  he  observes  caste 
requirements.  (Hinduism,  Past  and  Present,  by  J.  Murray 
Mitchell,  M.  A.,  LL.  D.,  p.  166,  second  edition.) 

All  this  is  not  without  scientific  value,  related  as  it  is  to  the 
question  of  ultimate  selection  and  survival  in  religions;  throwing 
light  on  that  social  system  which  is  based  on  Sanskrit  Literature. 


170  SANSKRIT  LITERATURE. 

Brahmanieal  heritage;  held  for  the  sharpening  of  their 
own  understanding,  and  kept  from  tlie  people, —  no  member 
of  the  dominant  priesthood  being  allowed  to  teach  a  man  of 
the  lowest  caste  or  the  so-called  un- Aryan  people  even  the 
laws  of  expiating  sin,  or  allow  him  to  hear  one  of  the 
Vedic  verses.^  The  sacred  books  are  never  expounded  to 
the  people,  and  when  Brahmanism  was  unhampered  by 
British  law,  there  was  a  death  penalty  for  a  man  of  servile 
caste,  were  he  to  read  them.  Among  the  most  eminent  San- 
skrit scholars  it  is  the  present  prevailing  opinion  that  the 
oldest  of  the  Vedic  Scriptures  were  written  about  a  thousand 
years  before  the  Christian  era,  certain  hymns  being  some 
centuries  older  at  a  time  when  there  was  a  tolerant  spirit 
in  religion.  The  earliest  hymns  set  forth  the  value  of  wis- 
dom, goodness  and  religious  meditation,  in  an  ideal  life; 
the  religious  service  was  patriarchal,  the  head  of  the  house 
was  priest  of  the  household ;  there  was  no  caste  in  the 
modern  sense.  Between  the  unknown  era  of  the  closing 
lines  of  the  Rigveda  and  the  birth  of  Gautama  the  caste 
distinctions  had  become  more  firmly  outlined,  that  system 
being  far  advanced  in  the  process  of  evolution.  Slight 
authority  has  attempted  to  so  date  the  Laws  of  Manu  as  to 
indicate  that  they  were  in  force  at  the  time  of  Gautama, 
but  the  claims  of  the  priesthood,  which  appear  in  this  code 
as  it  now  exists,  are  based  upon  a  recomposition  of  older 
material  by  relatively  recent  writers,  who  have  made  the 
text  suit  later  doctrines  than  were  in  vogue  B.  C.  500,  when 
a  portion  of  the  laws  were  in  force;  there  were,  undoubt- 
edly at  that  date  usages  of  long  standing,  which  indicate 
a  well-settled  literary  power  then  in  the  hands  of  the  Brah- 
mans,  and  a  priestcraft  so  strong  as  to  lead  many  Hindus  to 

*NoTE  BY  E.  Washburn  Hopkins,  LL.  D. —  The  two  castes  below 
the  Brahmans  were,  however,  obliged  to  learn  certain  Vedic 
verses.  And  it  may  be  added  that  in  the  time  of  Gautama  the 
intellectual  activity  of  India  was  found  rather  in  the  warrior 
caste  than  in  the  priestly.  The  priestly  records  show  many  new 
ideas  introduced  from  the  aristocrats.  The  Vedic  hymns  were 
not  all  priestly. 


THE  HINDU  SCRIPTURES.  171 

follow  the  Buddhists,  who  divided  India  with  the  Brahmans. 
for  a  thousand  years,  after  which  modern  Hinduism  took 
the  ground  and  perpetuated  many  of  the  original  ideas  of 
both  Brahmanism  and  Buddhism.  The  influence  of  Bud- 
dhism was  noticeable  in  the  abolition  of  ancient  sacrifice, 
in  the  tenderness  toward  animal  life,  in  an  intensified  belief 
in  transmigration,  in  the  efficacy  of  moral  self-culture,  self- 
control,  and  self-denial  as  a  source  of  power  in  accelerating- 
progress  toward  final  emancipation.^ 

The  Shastras,  or  divine  laws  of  religious  and  civil  duty^ 
revert  in  their  oldest  form  to  the  second  century  B.  C; 
but  the  most  Avere  probably  later  than  the  second  century^ 
of  the  Christian  era;  and  the  Puranas,  containing  a  Brah- 
manical  legendary  and  speculative  history  of  the  universe 
—  to  promote  the  worship  of  this  or  that  deity  or  relating 
to  some  sacred  place, —  revert  to  about  A.  D.  500,  although, 
some  portions  appear  to  have  been  written  after  modern 
Hinduism,  a  little  more  than  a  thousand  years  ago,  had 
become  well  established.^  To  the  Hindu  books  an  undying- 
interest  is  given  by  the  hymns  of  the  earliest  Hindu  sages: 
and  who  shall  venture  to  fix  moral  blame  upon  Indian 
saints  w^ho  entered  their  reward  ages  ago?^     The  doctrines. 

Wide  Monier-Williams,  Hinduism,  p.  80. 

-The  Hindu  books  deemed  sacred  are  so  voluminous  as  to  be 
unmanageable  by  a  single  student,  if  he  be  kept  to  the  Sanskrit 
text.  "Very  few  Hindus,"  says  Dr.  Mitchell,  "are  acquainted  -with 
their  o-wn  Shastras,  even  the  most  learned  Brahman  can  hardly 
have  read  more  than  a  fiftieth  part  of  them."  (Hinduism,  p.  13.) 
The  style  of  the  Sutras,  or  legal  manuals  in  prose,  about  20O 
B.  C,  is  often  so  involved  and  hard  to  understand,  that  the  opin- 
ion has  gained  ground  that  it  -w^as  made  so  by  intention.  The 
Shastras  are  metrical,  and  not  difficult.  From  a  modern  point  of 
vie-sv,  and  in  its  relation  to  selection  and  survival,  it  is  of  inter- 
est that  the  Puranic  -writings  speak  authoritatively  upon  natural 
science;  it  being  taught  in  India  to  this  day  that  the  -world  is 
composed  of  seven  concentric  islands  or  continents,  surrounded 
by  as  many  oceans,  consisting  respectively  of  wine,  clarified  but- 
ter, milk,  etc. 

^In   the   Mahabharata,    the   priests    are    represented    as    living 
retired  and  quiet  lives,  sedate,  humble;     elevated    by    religious 


172  SANSKRIT  LITERATURE. 

and  practices  of  modern  Hinduism  are  not  due,  at  their 
full  length,  to  this  generation  or  that,  yet  generation  upon 
generation  of  hereditary  bias  and  careful  instruction  have 
made  it  possible  for  the  Brahmans  to  retain  their  intellect- 
ual dominion  as  an  ecclesiastical  trust  over  nearly  two  hun- 
dred millions  of  their  countrymen  to  this  day,  formulating 
&  ritualistic  system  of  which  the  Brahman  must  be  the  sole 
priest  and  interpreter,  and  for  the  maintenance  of  which 
he  must  be  maintained.  This  is  through  an  intellectual 
mastership ;  during  scores  of  generations  the  Brahmans 
have  met  the  Hindu  tribesmen  in  keen  dogmatic  contest, 
never  failing  to  defeat  them  at  every  turn.  The  Brah- 
manical  firmness  of  purpose  in  early  generations  became, 
after  hundreds  of  years,  the  most  inflexible  and  arrogant 
self-will;  and  after  the  on-going  of  other  centuries  it 
became  a  pertinacious  obstinacy,  against  which  intellect- 
ually inferior  tribes  now  find  it  impossible  to  erect  them- 
selves. The  ablest  of  the  Brahmans  to-day  are  not  only 
quick  of  intellect,  but  energetic  and  acute  administrators, 
of  great  practical  power  in  handling  affairs ;  this,  with  their 
learning  unsurpassed  in  India,  gives  them  an  easy  leader- 
ship. Sharpness,  cleverness,  subtlety,  characterize  all  Brah- 
manical  activities.^  Their  religious  work,  it  is  right  to  view 
from  their  own  standpoint;  it  being  at  no  time  a  question 
■whether  the  popular  apprehension  of  God  may  be  made 
•clearer  and  more  correct,  or  whether  personal  duty  between 
man  and  man  may  be  more  accurately  discerned ;  it  is  rather 
a  question  of  details  considered  fundamental  to  the  well- 
knowledge,  morally  useful;  content  to  beg  for  food;  satisfied  with 
a  little  rice,  cows  and  a  hut;  without  worldly  ambition;  regarded 
with  love  or  awe  by  the  common  outside  world,  and  honored  by 
the  nobles. —  Hopkins'  Social  and  Military  Position  of  the  Ruling 
Caste  in  Ancient  India,  p.  72. 

'Not  a  little  detailed  information  concerning  the  Brahmans 
may  be  found  in  Rev.  M.  A.  Sherring's  Hindu  Tribes  and  Castes. 
London,  1872.  For  certain  statements  in  the  first  and  third  para- 
graphs of  this  section  of  the  text,  compare  Sherring,  pp.  3-5,  9, 
77,  78,  109. 


PERSONALITY  OF  GAUTAMA.  17^ 

being  of  an  orderly  society  —  the  faithful  following  of 
wholesome  rites  and  usages  coming  down  from  immemorial 
ages, —  and  a  question  of  keeping  the  brightest  and  most 
spiritual  men  in  India  in  their  hereditary  and  rightful 
position  as  the  intellectual  incarnation  of  Brahma,  at  the 
peril  of  national  confusion  and  social  disaster  if  it  be  other- 
wise. For  the  devout  stranger  from  a  far  country,  looking 
upon  the  social  organization  instituted  by  the  Brahmans,. 
let  him  be  content  if  he  can  but  detect  in  the  earliest  San- 
skrit words  in  the  Indian  books  a  delicate  fragrance  of 
precious  prehistoric  beliefs:  which,  indeed,  to  a  certain, 
degree,  permeate  the  most  ancient  writings  of  the  whole 
human  race,  as  a  subtle  aroma  of  the  teredo  tells  the  story 
of  a  prehistoric  ocean, 

II. 

Among  the  great  religious  leaders  of  mankind,  Gautama 
is,  of  all  men,  foremost.  The  continents  and  the  centuries 
witness  to  his  mighty  personality.  None  so  beautiful  as  he, 
in  his  gentleness,  in  his  purity  of  life,  in  his  self-abnegation, 
none  so  sweet-spirited,  none  so  worthy  to  be  tenderly  loved 
by  women  as  well  as  by  men,  as  the  Prince  of  India, —  who 
left  his  father's  palace  at  twenty-nine  to  lead  the  life  of  a 
poor  hermit  for  six  years,  and  who  then  spent  fifty  years 
in  making  known  the  truth  as  he  understood  it,  by  teach- 
ing and  preaching,  and  in  organizing  his  disciples  for  the 
conquest  of  Asia.^  He,  indeed,  is  to  be  lauded  for  the  sim- 
ple truths  he  uttered,  and  admired  by  all  generations  of 
men  for  his  elevated  moral  maxims,  which  were  sustained 
by  a  life  that  drew  men  to  himself. 

Seeking  to  solve  life's  problems  in  religious  solitude, 
there  came  a  day,  to  be  thought  of  always  with  revereiice, 
when  he  decided  that  the  discipline  of  his  own  soul  and  an 
outgoing  love  would  be  better  than  to  afflict  the  flesh 
through  long  fasting.     It  is  not  needful  to  debate  the  ques- 

^In  the  rainy  season  Gautama  lived  under  shelter  with  his  dis- 
ciples, the  remainder  of  the  year  was  spent  by  all  in  preaching. 


174  THE  BUDDHIST   BOOKS. 

tion  whether  or  not  the  Brahmanieal  system  was  rigidly 
fixed  at  that  hour,  Gautama  laid  the  axe  at  the  root  of  the 
tree  by  renouncing  the  Vedic  books  as  a  binding  religious 
authority,  and  began  his  new  life  without  them.  He 
renounced  the  Brahmanic  theory  of  the  soul's  life,  and 
freed  himself  from  all  anxiety  for  continued  existence,  set- 
tling it  once  for  all  that  life's  self -contending  must  be  car- 
ried to  self-conquest  here  and  now.  To  be  calm,  pure, 
loving  and  wise,  though  earthly  life  be  a  weariness  —  this 
was  the  triumphant  purpose  of  Gautama.^ 

When  he  once  became  conscious  of  spiritual  enlighten- 
ment, he  hesitated  not  long  to  apply  to  himself  the  term  — 
the  Awakened  or  Enlightened  One, —  the  Buddha;  and  to 
.announce  that  "He  that  is  pure  in  heart  is  the  true  priest, 
not  he  that  knows  the  Vedas. ' '-  It  was  at  first  but  an  intel- 
lectual contest.  When  he  found  himself  freed  from  the 
incubus  of  his  early  faith,  and  all  his  inner  doubts  and 
fears  were  resolved,  disease  and  old  age  and  death  had  lost 
their  terror.  He  did  indeed  pause  a  moment  before  com- 
mitting himself  to  set  rolling  the  wheel  of  a  new  ethical 
movement  upon  the  earth,  but,  once  decided,  he  drew  after 
him  a  third  part  of  mankind.^  Those  to  whom  he  addressed 
himself  felt,  perhaps  more  than  he  did,  the  pressure  of  the 
Brahmanieal  monopoly  of  truth,*  their  overbearing  exac- 
tions and  denial  of  human  rights.  So  gentle  was  Gautama, 
so  self-sacrificing,  so  thoughtful,  so  devout,  and  so  great 
was  his  personal  magnetism  as  he  conversed  upon  spiritual 
themes  and  the  emancipation  of  the  soul  from  all  evil,  that 
enthusiastic  disciples  soon  gathered  about  him.  And  these 
he  sent  out  to  preach  the  new  doctrine.  By  them  it  was 
said,  that  the  prince  —  in  an  age  when  princes  were  no 

^Compare  Hopkins'  Religions  of  India,  pp.  316,  317. 

-Cited  in  Religions  of  India,  by  E.  W.  Hopkins,  Professor  of 
Sanskrit,  Yale  University,  p.  319.     Boston,  1895. 

'To  the  devout  Buddhist  it  is  a  source  of  constant  joy  and 
gratitude  that  Gautama  so  decided,  through  love  and  pity  for 
humanity. —  Compare  Rhys  Davids'  Buddhism,  p.  4.     London. 

*Monier-Williams,  Indian  Wisdom,  p.  55.     London,  1875. 


THE   MENDICANT    IDEAL.  175 

friends  of  the  common  people, —  had  turned  aside  from  the 
fascination  of  an  Indian  court  to  introduce  a  spiritual 
reform  without  caste  distinctions;  that  he  was  clear  as  to 
his  own  enlightenment ;  that  the  scheme  of  salvation  which 
the  prince  outlined  w^as  simple  and  free  from  the  old  time 
burdens;  and  that  all  men  were  henceforth  to  stand  upon 
the  same  plane  of  religious  opportunity  and  obligation. 

When  Gautama,  the  high  born  and  preeminently  intel- 
lectual religious  leader,  addressed  himself  to  the  organiza- 
tion of  his  followers,  the  already  hard  and  fast  caste  lines 
were  abandoned  forever.  It  was  not  thought  at  first,  that 
this  would  really  re-form  national  life.^  To  seek  the 
supreme  good  was  the  main  thing;  and  if  the  blessed  life 
should  win  men  to  itself,  this  w^ould  renew  the  world.  As 
the  Brahmans  had  received  alms,  and  gifts  had  poured  in 
upon  them  that  they  m.ight  distribute  worldly  goods  to  the 
needy,  Gautama  himself  received  food  as  a  gift  that  he 
might  devote  himself  wholly  to  his  spiritual  work;  and 
while  he  built  up  no  order  of  priesthood  he  did  establish  a 
recluse  class  of  religious  men,  who  as  mendicants  should 
receive  their  daily  food  from  door  to  door.  It  had  always 
been  the  doctrine  in  India  that  those  who  so  contributed  to 
maintain  religious  men  w^ere  spiritually  the  gainers  for  it. 
From  the  beginning  till  now  there  has  been  no  Buddhism 
outside  the  Sangha,  or  order  of  mendicant  monks,  and 
their  lay  associates  or  supporters;  the  congregation  of 
monks  being  the  kernel  of  the  community  itself.-  This 
institute  was  thoroughly  organized,  and  governed  by  fixed 
rules.^ 

'Compare  Buddha,  by  Dr.  Herman  Oldenberg,  p.  153.  London, 
1882. 

^Kuenen's  Hibhert  Lectures,  1SS2,  p.  2C8. 

*A  historical  parallel  of  great  interest  in  the  social  development 
of  the  Occident  is  found  in  the  monastic  experiment  made  in 
Christendom  several  centuries  later,  which  —  however  largely  it 
once  figured  in  Europe, —  ultimately  proved  so  little  essential  to 
the  permanent  onsweeping  advance  of  Christianity  as  such,  that, 
as  an  organic  body,  it  is  but  casually  referred  to  in  the  text, 
although  briefly  treated  of  in  Appendix,  A,  infra. 


176  THE  BUDDHIST  BOOKS. 

The  ideal  of  mendicant  life  included  simplicity  and  self- 
denial,  and  many  amenities  of  spirit  that  finally  modified 
the  social  life  of  myriads  of  people  in  Asia.  The  mendicant 
should  attend  to  the  Law,  and  not  be  careful  about  food 
and  a  luxurious  bed.  He  should  not  receive  gold  and  sil- 
ver; nor  wear  ornaments  —  not  even  a  flower.  Song  and 
all  manner  of  music  and  dancing  he  should  ignore.^  He 
should  not  procure  a  new  rice  bowl,  so  long  as  the  old  one 
could  be  kept  from  leaking.  In  making  a  new  seat-cover, 
he  ought  to  patch  it  with  an  old  piece,  to  destroy  any 
appearance  of  finery.  "I  regard  the  dignities  of  kings  and 
princes  as  the  dust  motes  in  a  sunbeam, ' '  it  was  said  by  the 
princely  Buddha;  "the  value  of  gold  and  jewels  as  that  of 
a  broken  platter;  dresses  of  the  finest  silk  I  regard  as  the 
scraps  of  silk  given  as  presents. "  "To  abstain  from  expen- 
sive dresses, ' '  was  the  rule.  Yet  it  was  written :  * '  He  who,, 
though  dressed  in  fine  apparel,  exercises  tranquility,  is 
quiet,  subdued,  restrained,  chaste,  and  has  ceased  to  find 
fault  with  all  other  beings,  he  indeed  is  an  ascetic."^  To 
live  free  from  hatred  among  men  who  hate,  free  from  ail- 
ments among  the  ailing,  free  from  affliction  among  men  who 
are  sick  at  heart,  free  from  care  among  the  busy,  free  from 
yearning  among  those  who  are  anxious,  living  happily 
though  calling  nothing  their  own, —  this  was  the  ideal  of 
the  Sangha.^ 

"As  the  bee  —  injuring  not 

The  flower,  its  color,  or  scent  — 

Flies  away,  taking  the  nectar; 

So  let  the  wise  man  dwell  upon  the  earth, ' ' 
"The  restrained  in  hand,  restrained  in  foot, 

Restrained  in  speech,  the  best  of  the  self -controlled; 

He  whose  delight  is  inward,  who  is  tranquil, 

And  happy  when  alone  —  him  they  call  mendicant. 

^Davids'  Buddhism,  pp.  157-160. 

^DTiammapada,  p.  39,  verse  142.     Max  Miiller's  translation. 
'Phrases   from   the  Dhammapada.    Compare   citation   in   Rhys 
Davids'  Buddhism,  p.  130. 


MENDICANT  MISSIONS.  177 

The  mendicant  who  controls  his  tongue,  speaking  wisely, 

and  is  not  puffed  up, 
Who  throws  light  on  worldly  and  on  heavenly  things  — 
His  word  is  sweet.  "^ 

' '  His  thought  is  quiet,  quiet  are  his  word  and  deed,  when 
he  has  obtained  freedom  by  true  knowledge."  Anger, 
pride,  suspicion,  pretension  of  holiness,  all  ill-speaking, 
back-biting,  and  controversy, —  these  were  repressed  by 
rule.  Though  cursed,  to  cherish  no  ill-will ;  though  struck, 
to  strike  not  in  return;  though  innocent  of  evil,  yet  to 
endure  reproach  and  bonds, —  this  was  the  rule  for  those 
who  would  drink  of  the  water  of  a  life  of  seclusion.-  "A 
man  who  foolishly  does  one  wrong,  I  will  return  to  him  the 
protection  of  my  ungrudging  love,"  said  the  Master;  ''the 
more  evil  comes  from  him,  the  more  good  shall  go  from 
me." 

This  dictum  of  the  i\Iaster  was  beautifully  illustrated  by 
the  merchant  Puma,  who  determined  to  go  upon  a  mission 
to  a  savage  tribe.     Gautama  sought  to  dissuade  him: — 

"The  men  of  Sronaparanta  are  violent,  cruel,  passion- 
ate, fierce  and  insolent.  When  they  address  you  in  wicked, 
brutal,  gross  and  insulting  language,  when  they  storm  at 
you  and  abuse  you,  what  will  you  do,  0  Purna?" 

"When  they  so  address  me,  this  is  what  I  will  think," 
replied  Puma.  "These  men  are  certainly  good  and  gen- 
tle, who  do  not  strike  me  with  their  hands  or  with  stones. '  * 

"But  if  they  strike  you,  what  will  you  think?" 

"I  will  think  them  good  and  gentle,  because  they  do  not 
strike  me  with  cudgels  or  with  the  sword." 

"But  if  they  strike  you  with  the  sword?" 

"I  will  think  them  good  and  gentle,  because  they  do  not 
completely  deprive  me  of  life." 

'Sacred  citations  from  Davids'  Buddhism,  pp.  129,  154. 
-Compare    phrases    from    the   Pitakas,    as    cited    by    Professor 
Davids,  pp.  155,  156. 
12 


178  THE  BUDDHIST  BOOKS. 

"But  if  they  deprive  you  of  life,  what  then?" 

"I  will  think  the  men  of  Sronaparanta  good  and  gentle, 
for  delivering  me  with  so  little  pain  from  this  body  of 
vileness." 

"Go,  thou,  0  Purna,  thyself  delivered,  deliver  others; 
thyself  arrived  at  the  other  shore,  help  others  thither ;  thy- 
self comforted,  comfort  others;  having  attained  complete 
Nirvna,  guide  others  to  it. ' ' 

In  such  spirit  Purna  entered  upon  his  mission,  which 
was,  says  the  record,  most  successful  with  the  savage  men 
of  Sronaparanta. 

Going  forth  to  preach  this  life,  the  initial  energy  gave  to 
it  great  effect.  The  early  mendicants  were  apparently  the 
most  winsome,  friendly  men,  brethren  to  all  who  were  in 
any  trouble;  they  went  hither  and  thither  to  heal  the 
wounds  of  the  world;  they  proposed  to  dry  up  the  very 
fountain  of  earthly  woe,  to  annihilate  passion,  cruelty,  evil 
desire,  to  quench  ultimately  a  life  of  anguish, —  these  were 
the  men  whose  beaming  faces,  whose  words  of  love,  so  new 
and  unlooked  for,  appeared  in  the  dark  realms  of  primeval 
paganism  like  rays  of  light.  They  kindled  the  Light  of 
Asia.  The  rulers  of  petty  tribes  and  of  wide  kingdoms, 
even  of  an  empire  like  China,  found  that  the  doctrines  of 
these  men  were  adapted  to  make  more  obedient  subjects,^ 
and  that  the  monks  did  not  meddle  with  politics  (as  the 
Christian  monks  of  Europe  did)  ;  and  so  it  came  about 
that  the  Sangha  became  a  fixture,  a  recognized  power  for 
good  among  hundreds  of  millions  of  people.  The  most 
ancient  inscriptions  found  in  India  teach  obedience  to 
parents,  kindness  to  children  and  to  animals,  teach  self- 
control,  generosity  of  spirit,  and  absolute  toleration:  was 

^Northern  Buddhism  is  more  positive  in  tone  than  that  of  the 
South:  President  Martin,  in  his  Lore  of  Cathay,  thinks  that  upon 
the  whole  the  doctrines  it  has  promulgated  have  been  helpful  to 
the  Chinese  people. 

To  love  others,  to  live  an  orderly  life,  and  to  obey  the  laws, — 
this  was  the  early  Buddhist  refrain  upon  gaining  a  foothold  in 
Japan. 


THE  SACRED  LITERATURE.  179 

not  he  indeed  worthy  to  rule,  Asoka,^  who  gave  such  counsel 
to  his  empire?^  The  mendicant  monks  of  Buddha  have 
undoubtedly  stood  among  those  who  have  been  morally  the 
best  in  a  densely  peopled  district,  in  a  narrow  area  during 
twenty-three  hundred  years,  and  in  a  wide  area  from  twelve 
to  twenty  centuries.  If  there  have  been  any  persons  in 
these  vast  realms  who  were  sincere  in  spirit,  pure  in  heart, 
and  inclined  to  righteousness,  who  loved  such  intellectual 
pursuits  as  their  generation  offered  them,  and  such  philo- 
sophical contemplation  as  their  seclusion  might  suggest, 
they  must  have  been  found,  the  most  of  them,  among  the 
brethren  of  the  Sangha. 

The  words  of  Gautama,  as  they  were  iterated  during  half 
a  century,  were  long  remembered  and  reported, —  the  didac- 
tic, the  allegorical  and  the  metaphysical;  and  after  three 
hundred  and  thirty  years  they  were  recorded.  The  Pitakas 
of  Ceylon,  excluding  the  repetitions,  are  probably  not  more 
voluminous  than  the  Bible.^  There  are  also  commentaries 
that  carry  great  weight, —  as  that  of  Buddhaghosha  some 
fourteen  hundred  years  ago.  The  books  of  the  Northern 
Buddhists  are  less  known.  Of  Tibet  the  holy  books  are 
two:  one  of  which,  the  Kanjur,  consists  of  one  hundred 
volumes  folio,  comprising  ten  hundred  and  eighty-three  dis- 
tinct works;  and  the  other,  the  Tanjur,  consists  of  two 
hundred  and  twenty-five  volumes  folio,  each  of  which 
weighs  nearly  five  pounds  in  the   Chinese  edition.     The 

'"The  Constantine  of  India." — Max  Miiller. 

^Cunningham's  Corpus  Inscriptionum  Indicarum  (as  cited  by 
Berry  in  Christianity  and  Buddhism,  the  Donnellan  Lecture, 
1889-'90,  London,  p.  103),  renders  the  pillar  edicts  of  Asoka:  — 

VL  "I  pray  with  every  variety  of  prayer  for  those  who  differ 
from  me  in  creed,  that  they,  following  after  my  proper  example, 
may  with  me  attain  unto  everlasting  salvation." 

Vin.  "This  is  the  true  religious  devotion,  this  the  sum  of 
religious  instruction,  that  it  should  increase  the  mercy  and 
charity,  the  truth  and  purity,  the  kindness  and  honesty  of  the 
world." 

^'Rhys  Davids'  Buddhism,  p.  20.  These  books  were  reduced  to 
writing  88  B.  C,  p.  234,  Davids. 


180  BUDDHIST   LITERATURE. 

Nepalese  Buddhists,  who  live  upon  the  eaves  of  the  Hima- 
layan roof  of  the  world,  say  that  their  sacred  books  number 
eighty-four  thousand  volumes.  Ancient  monastic  records 
appear  to  comprise  a  portion  of  the  venerated  books. ^  The 
Buddhist  teaching  of  more  recent  ages,  especially  in  the 
North,  is  thought  to  represent  the  original  words  of  Gau- 
tama, not  more  accurately  than  the  words  of  Socrates  as 
reported  by  Plato.^ 

By  the  very  theory  of  Gautama,  in  founding  the  Order, 
no  prominence  could  be  given  to  distinctive  literary  pro- 
duction; and  with  their  ablest  men  drawn  into  the  monas- 
teries, the  secular  literature  of  Buddhist  lands  in  Southern 
Asia  has  rarely  risen  above  the  romance  or  legendary  tale, 
gross  and  unprofitable.^  In  Japan  and  China,  there  have 
been  other  influences  in  the  formation  of  the  national  mind. 

Western  ignorance  of  the  Japanese  dramatists,  novelists, 
essayists  and  poets  is  matched  by  such  contempt  as  the 
Orient  formerly  put  upon  Occidental  learning ;  what  is  now 
the  Imperial  University  at  Tokyo  having  been  in  its  germi- 
nal state  the  "Place  for  the  Examination  of  Barbarian 
Writings."  It  is  stated  by  competent  Western  authority 
learned  in  Things  Japanese,  that  Buddhism  at  its  incoming 
w^as  of  service  to  the  country  through  introducing  art  and 
medicine,  moulding  its  folk-lore,  creating  its  dramatic 
poetry,  deeply  influencing  its  politics  and  every  sphere  of 
social  and  intellectual  activity.'*  Yet  as  to  the  merit  of 
literary  productiveness,  Professor  Chamberlain  affirms  that 
all  the  laurels  are  for  the  Shinto  cult,  the  Buddhist  contri- 
bution being  of  little  value.     The  recent  literary  output 

Wide  citation  in  Monier-Williams'  Buddhism,  pp.  541,  542. 
London,  1889. 

^Chinese  Buddhism,  by  Joseph  Edkins,  p.  38.     London,  1880 

Arnold's  Light  of  Asia  is  not  based  on  the  Tripitaka,  but  upon 
biographical  material  of  later  origin  than  the  Christian  era. — 
The  Bishop  of  Colombo,  in  the  Nineteenth  Century.  1888. 

Wide  The  Wheel  of  the  Law,  by  Henry  Alaba.ster,  p.  4. 

^Things  Japanese,  by  B.  H.  Chamberlain,  p.  71,  third  edition. 
London,  1898. 


THE  CHINESE  CLASSICS.  181 

of  the  country  has  been  mainly  the  work  of  young  men  of 
Occidental  education,  who  have  written  upon  Western  lands 
and  customs. 

III. 

The  Chinese  Classics,  or  so  called  Sacred  Books^  of  the 
Empire,  are  not  religious  but  philosophical.  Confucius 
was  an  agnostic,  nor  would  he  talk  about  spiritual  being.- 
As  "the  throneless  king,"  he  reached  supreme  power,  not 
as  a  warrior,  not  as  a  prophet,  but  by  making  a  wise  and  edi- 
fying selection  from  the  ancient  wisdom  of  his  people,  seiz- 
ing upon  the  formative  ideas  already  crystallized  through 
ages  of  heredity,  putting  them  into  literary  form,  and  trans- 
mitting them.  It  may  all  be  summed  up  in  this :  through 
faithfulness  in  self-culture  and  faithfulness  in  domestic 
duties,  one  is  equally  fitted  to  serve  or  to  reign ;  obedience  to 
patriarchal  rulers  is  based  on  filial  obedience,  and  filial 
obedience  is  based  on  the  right  discipline  of  one's  self.  To 
this  end,  the  positive  gathering  of  knowledge  and  wisdom  is 
made  life's  leading  aim.  Moral  merit  is  set  forth  as  the 
only  thing  for  China  to  measure  by;  this  alone  marks  the 
distinction  between  men.  Revenge  was  forbidden  by  Con- 
fucius, and  humanity  he  made  the  principal  virtue.  Fair 
dealing,  the  keeping  of  good  faith,  practical  benevolence,  the 
suppression  of  vices  that  injure  one's  self  or  others,  filial 
duties, —  obedience  and  honor  to  one 's  parents  while  living, 
long  mourning  for  them,  and  keeping  alive  their  memory  by 
tablets  and  ceremonies;  like  recognition  of  all  national 
heroes  and  sages ;  obedience  to  all  superiors, —  the  child  to 
the  parent,  the  wife  to  her  husband,  the  subject  to  all  in 

^They  are  esteemed  so  sacred  that  the  admitted  textual  errors 
of  ancient  copyists  may  not  be  amended. —  Martin's  Lore  of 
Cathay,   p.  247. 

=Wu  Ting  Fang,  late  Chinese  Minister  to  the  United  States. 
Address  before  the  Society  for  Ethical  Culture.  New  York, 
December  9,  1900. 

Tide  also  Pung  Kwang  Yu's  paper  in  the  Parliament  of  Reli- 
gions, to  the  effect  that  Confucianism  is  not  a  religion  but  an. 
ethical  system,  pp.  378,  379.     Chicago,  1893. 


182  CHINESE   LITERATURE. 

authority;  all  virtues  which  lead  to  loyalty, —  that  fidelity 
to  the  state  which  is  the  safeguard  of  a  thousand  genera- 
tions : —  this  is  Confucianism  at  its  highest  and  best, —  let  it 
be  called  a  philosophy,  it  is  so  useful  that  it  is  without 
impropriety,  commonly  classified  as  one  of  the  great  reli- 
gions of  the  world.  At  three  score  and  ten,  Confucius,  hav- 
ing finished  his  writings,  led  his  disciples  to  a  hill  top, 
erected  an  altar,  and  placed  upon  it  an  edition  of  the  books  ; 
and  there  kneeled,  devoutly  returning  thanks  to  Heaven  for 
the  life  and  strength  to  complete  them,  and  imploring  that 
the  benefit  to  his  countrymen  might  not  be  small.^ 

Of  the  seventy-two  sages  who  were  enrolled  as  disciples 
of  Confucius,  the  greatest  was  Mencius,  the  St.  Paul  of  the 
Confucian  school,  actuated  by  the  zeal  of  an  apostle,  and 
rebuking  vice  in  high  places  with  the  courage  of  a  Hebrew 
prophet. 

The  ''Book  of  History,"  from  which  Confucius  made 
compilations,  w^as  first  w^ritten  forty-three  hundred  years 
ago,  and  the  ' '  Book  of  Rites ' '  thirty-one  hundred :-  the  one 
is  the  foundation  of  the  Chinese  system  of  government  and 
of  religious  ceremonials;  the  other  is  a  guide  to  every-day 
etiquette  and  propriety  of  conduct  in  domestic,  social  and 
public  duty, —  affection  and  virtue  being  regulated,  as  to 
the  proper  forms  to  be  observed.  The  Book  contains  three 
thousand  rules  of  etiquette  to  be  memorized.  Minute  atten- 
tion is  given  to  the  care  and  training  of  children,  and  to  the 
detailed  points  of  filial  obligations.^ 

^Lore  of  Cathay,  p.  175. 

Among  the  sages  of  the  pagan  world,  says  Martin,  Confucius 
comes  nearest  to  Christ  in  virtue  and  influence. —  Cycle  of 
Cathay,  p.  287. 

Confucius  distinctly  recognized  that  human  life  and  the  mate- 
rial world  were  under  the  care  and  guidance  of  Heaven,  or  of 
Providence  as  we  should  say. 

"Professor  Douglas. 

^NoTE  UPON  Filial  Piety. —  This  demands  much  more  than  the 
support  of  one's  parents.  In  the  patriarchal  family  a  man's  wife 
is  devoted  to  his  parents;  her  first  duty  is  to  them.  A  son  so 
long  as  his  father  lives  is  treated  as  a  child.  He  should  not 
enter  a  room  unless  invited  by  his  father  nor  retire  without  per- 


FILLVL  PIETY.  183 

Not  in  vain  are  these  requirements  of  the  Sacred  Books, 
used  so  largely  as  they  have  been  during  more  than  two 
thousand  years,  and  as  the  only  text-books  during  forty 

mission,  neither  should  he  speak  unless  spoken  to:  this  disci- 
pline is  observed  in  spirit  if  not  literally.  No  room  is  left  for 
independent  action  or  personal  judgment;  a  man  cannot  exercise 
his  independent  powers  of  manhood  until  he  is  too  far  advanced 
in  years  to  have  their  exercise  productive.  So,  throughout 
China,  to-day  is  kept  in  the  bonds  of  yesterday. 

There  is  one  curious  circumstance  relating  to  this,  in  direct 
opposition  to  the  maxim  that  as  the  twig  is  bent  the  tree  is 
inclined, —  Chinese  boyhood  running  wild,  and  Chinese  manhood 
reverting  to  the  hereditary  type  and  yielding  to  the  national 
trait  of  filial  obedience.  There  is  no  discipline  of  children,  they 
are  not  taught  to  obey  their  parents,  and  they  have  no  idea  of 
prompt  obedience, —  this  is  a  matter  of  common  experience.  Dr. 
Yates,  at  the  Missionary  Conference,  Shanghai,  1877,  remarked 
In  a  paper  upon  ancestral  worship,  based  upon  thirty  years' 
observation:  "Of  all  the  people  of  whom  we  have  any  knowledge, 
the  sons  of  the  Chinese  are  most  unfilial,  disobedient  to  parents, 
and  pertinacious  in  having  their  own  way  from  the  time  they 
are  able  to  make  known  their  wants."  Dr.  Legge  sharply  dif- 
fered, stating  that  his  experience  had  been  different.  The  truth 
seems  to  be  this:  parents  at  first  worship  their  sons,  then  demand 
worship  from  them.  Male  issue,  needful  to  maintain  ancestral 
•worship,  is  so  greatly  desired  that  sons  are  left  to  grow  up  as 
they  will;  yet  the  patriarchal  family  system,  and  the  "Book  of 
Rites,"  ultimately  prevail,  and  the  sons  usually  exercise  filial 
obedience  not  only  in  supporting  their  parents  but  in  making 
old  age  honorable.  "One  of  the  most  pleasing  features  of  Chi- 
nese home  life  is  the  deference  and  respect  shown  to  their  elders 
by  the  younger  members  of  the  household." 

Looked  at  in  a  broad  way,  the  term  "filial  piety"  does  not  so 
much  indicate  the  obedience  of  the  child  as  the  authority  of  the 
parent  which  is  the  grand  law  that  underlies  the  entire  patri- 
archal system  of  the  empire,  that  has  existed  immemorial  ages. 
As  the  family  is  obedient  to  its  patriarch,  the  district  must  obey 
the  patriarchal  mandarin,  and  all  obey  the  patriarchal  emperor. 
Thus  obedience  is  the  bond  of  social  order.  This  doctrine  was 
powerfully  enforced  by  Confucius. 

Authorities  upon  this  note: — Douglas'  China,  p.  94;  Chester 
Holcombe's  Real  Chinaman,  pp.  89,  90.  N.  Y.,  1895;  Smith's  Chi- 
ne.se  Characteristics,  p.  173.  N.  Y.,  1894;  Martin's  Cycle  of 
Cathay,  pp.  334,  198. 


184  CHINESE   LITERATURE. 

generations  in  the  annual  civil  service  examinations,  and  so 
thoroughly  learned  by  the  literary  class  and  the  publicists 
of  the  nation:  they  have  proved  a  most  beneficent  force.^ 
Not  in  vain  have  risen  temples  in  every  city  to  honor  the 
compiler  and  editor  of  the  Chinese  Classics,  not  in  vain  has 
a  tablet  to  his  memory  been  placed  in  every  schoolroom  for 
the  daily  salutation  of  the  school  children  during  milleniums 
of  history.  Not  in  vain  has  Confucius  been  exalted  as  "in 
word  and  deed  a  constant  manifestation  of  ideal  excel- 
lence. "-  "  Wherever, ' '  asks  a  revered  sage,  ' '  wherever  ship 
or  chariot  can  go,  wherever  sun  and  moon  give  light,  wher- 
ever frosts  and  dews  descend,  who  does  not  honor  and  love 
such  a  man?" 

It  is  the  positive  teaching  of  Confucius,  rather  than  the 
negative  scheme  of  Gautama,  that  has  been  of  moral  value 
in  China  f  an  inestimable  power  for  good  over  his  own  peo- 
ple having  been  exercised  age  after  age,  —  China  having 
been  literally  "governed  by  maxims."*  The  incorruptible 
manhood  of  Viceroy  Chang  Chihtung  has  been  formed  by 
Confucianism.  Professor  Legge  was  once  confidentially 
questioned  by  the  Chinese  Ambassador  to  St.  James, 
whether  he  did  not  think  the  Middle  Kingdom  more  moral 
than  England.  What  is  worst  under  Christianity  is  widely 
known,  what  is  best  is  more  private:  the  same  is  true  of 
Confucianism, 

The  sage  himself  had  less  literary  skill  than  some  of  the 
authors  from  whom  he  made  his  compilations ;  yet  the  elab- 

^If  this  intellectual  and  moral  system  has  probably  had  too 
little  influence  on  the  formation  of  youthful  character,  it  is 
because  the  main  service  of  the  ideas  is  thought  to  be  their  use 
for  the  annual  civic  examinations  for  office  holding,  rather  than 
for  their  reproduction  in  life. —  Suggested  hy  the  President  of 
Tien  Tsin  University  in  a  Lecture  at  Harvard  College,  1906. 

-Lore  of  Cathay,  p.  246. 

^Chinese  Buddhism,  Joseph  Edkins,  p.  201. 

Bishop  Schereschewsky,  late  of  Shanghai,  expressed  himself 
to  the  same  effect,  in  the  New  York  Tribune. 

*"No  nation,  no  race,  was  ever  better  outfitted  with  admirable 
moral  precepts  than  the  Chinese." — Arthur  H.  Smith. 


LITERARY  PRODUCTIVENESS.  185 

orate  civil  service  examinations  of  China  have  developed 
more  literary  aptitude  than  could  have  been  looked  for  from 
the  model  of  the  Master.  A  vast  number  of  works  upon 
jurisprudence,  science,  education,  biography,  and  history 
have  been  produced,  but  they  are  not  of  great  value  to  the 
Western  student;^  the  most  creditable  book-making  has 
been  that  of  the  encyclopedias  upon  historical  and  literary 
topics,  which  are  marked  by  careful  investigation  and  based 
upon  authority, —  one  of  them  constituting  a  library  of 
some  six  thousand  volumes.  Although  printing  was 
invented  in  China,  A.  D.  593,  it  has  exercised  less  influence 
upon  the  world  at  large  than  the  invention  in  Europe  nine 
centuries  later ;  it  being  apparent  that  the  national  literary 
level  has  been  reached  through  the  perpetual  re-studying 
of  Confucius  and  Mencius.  There  is  not  less  nor  more  of 
intellectual  power,  adapted  to  foreign  peoples,  than  that 
found  in  the  Nine  Classics. 

IV. 

The  personality  of  Mohammed  is  in  many  respects  pecul- 
iarly attractive ;  and  must  command  the  enthusiastic  adher- 
ence of  those  unacquainted  with  a  more  perfect  ideal 
of  wider  range  of  sympathy  and  better  adapted  to  win 
a  universal  following.  Mohammed's  own  character  was 
accepted  as  proof  of  his  mission.  He  was  singularly  affa- 
ble: "The  Most  High  has  not  raised  me  up  to  strive  with 
any  one. ' '-  He  was,  says  the  Persian  account,  *  *  not  rough 
in  manner,  nor  loud  in  his  conversation,  nor  did  he  utter 
opprobrious  and  uncourteous  words.     He  domineered  over 

'The  game  may,  not  without  truth,  be  said  of  the  more  ephem- 
eral literature.  If  the  Sacred  Books  are  characterized  by  their 
purity,  the  novels  and  jest  books  are  unspeakably  filthy. —  Cycle 
of  Cathay,  p.  S3. 

^"Mussulmans,"  cried  the  Prophet  from  the  pulpit  one  day,  "if 
I  have  struck  anyone  of  you,  here  is  my  back  that  he  may  strike 
me.  If  anyone  has  been  wronged  by  me,  let  him  return  injury 
for  injury.  If  I  have  taken  anybody's  goods,  all  that  I  have  is 
at  his  disposition." 


18G  ARABIC   LITERATURE. 

no  one,  nor  inquired  after  the  faults  and  failings  of  men. 
He  bestowed  on  each  of  the  company  a  portion  of  favor  and 
kindness,  and  so  conducted  himself  that  every  one  present 
thought  himself  the  dearest  of  all  mankind  to  the  prophet. 
There  were  no  loud  voices  and  no  slanders  uttered  in  his 
presence. ' '  ]\Iost  gracious  was  the  prophet  to  the  humblest 
of  men,  being  at  one  with  them  all,  covered  by  the  common 
dust  in  the  midst  of  them.  He  sat  upon  the  ground  to 
mend  his  shoes  and  his  clothing.  Attentively  he  listened  to 
any  one  who  addressed  him.  ' '  He  never, ' '  says  Aboulf eda, 
"withdrew  his  hand  the  first  from  the  hand  of  one  who 
saluted  him."  To  eat  on  the  ground  with  servants  and  to 
salute  children^  were  two  of  the  five  things  Mohammed  said 
he  never  would  abandon.  He  loved  his  horse  and  his  camel, 
and  wiped  off  their  sweat  with  his  handkerchief.  When 
there  died  a  negro  sweeper  of  the  Medina  mosque,  the 
prophet  inquired  for  the  grave  and  went  there  to  pray,  as 
if  he  had  been  a  dear  friend.  When  Djafir,  his  standard 
bearer,  was  slain,  he  went  at  once  to  the  home  of  the  mar- 
tyr, and  took  upon  his  lap  an  orphaned  child,  caressing  his 
head  in  pity, —  so  communicating  to  the  widow  the  great 
sorrow  that  had  come  to  her.  It  need  not  be  questioned 
whether  or  not  these  accounts  be  true;  that  they  are 
related  of  the  Prophet  by  his  followers  shows  what  traits 
were  believed  to  be  the  secrets  of  his  power.  The  most 
marvelous  stories  are  told  of  his  practical  benevolence, — 
giving  most  imprudently  to  the  poor,  prodigally  borrowing 
to  give  to  the  needy,  and  trusting  Grod  for  a  return ;  and  we 
are  grateful  to  read  that  through  God's  bounty  a  hundred 
camels  were  sometimes  given  him  at  once.  "So  generous 
was  he,  that  a  piece  of  money  never  stopped  with  him." 
Had  not  Gabriel  advised  that  it  was  better  for  him  to  choose 

^He  played  with,  the  children  of  Ali,  the  husband  of  his  daugh- 
ter Fatima.  One  of  these  little  ones,  Hossein,  having  crept  upon 
his  back  while  he  was  prostrated  in  prayer,  the  Prophet  remained 
in  this  attitude  till  the  mother  came  to  remove  the  child. — 
Related  in  Lamartine's  Turkey.  If  but  a  tradition,  it  accords 
with  the  Prophet's  known  characteristics,  as  accepted  by  Islam. 


THE  prophet's  SINCERITY.  187 

to  be  a  prophet  and  a  "servant,"  rather  than  a  prophet 
and  a  "king"?  IIow  far  it  was  Oriental  imagination  we 
know  not,  but  he  is  reported  to  us  as  of  remarkably  fine 
figure  and  delicate  features.  The  beauty  of  the  sun  at  his 
rising,  and  the  beauty  of  the  moon  in  her  glory,  were  com- 
pared to  him.  Best  of  all,  in  an  idolatrous  age  he  had 
faith.  "What  are  we  two  against  so  many?"  asked  his 
companion  in  the  cave.  "There  are  three."  "Who  is  the 
third?"    "God." 

That  Mohammed  was  sincerely  religious,  intent  upon  rid- 
ding himself  of  evil  in  his  own  life,  with  a  great  longing 
for  spiritual  righteousness,  must  be  assumed.^  He  found 
that  Israel  in  Arabia  had  fallen  away  from  the  simplicity 
of  the  patriarchal  religion,  and  that  image  worship  of  the 
saints  prevailed  among  Christians,  so  that  when  his  heart 
was  hot  against  the  idolatry  of  his  people,  he  selected 
such  elements  of  faith  as  approved  themselves  to  him, 
whether  Judaic  or  Christian  —  putting  new  life  into  dog- 
mas that  had  long  been  powerless, —  and  fell  back  upon 
what  he  believed  to  be  the  religion  of  the  nomadic  Ishmael 
and  Abraham,  adapted  to  his  own  times  and  to  future  ages. 
The  earnest  seekers  after  God  rallied  to  support  his  mission^ 
and  out  of  a  few  desert  tribes  a  nation  arose  at  once 
through  forming  a  brotherhood  of  believers,  where  blood 
relationship  had  been  formerly  the  sole  bond  of  union  — 
and  often  the  cause  of  tribal  dissension.- 

^If  any  say  otherwise,  it  is  not  in  relation  to  his  early  career. 
The  lectures  of  R.  Bosworth  Smith  upon  Mohammed  and  Moham- 
medanism (second  edition,  Boston,  1876),  well  offset  the  counter 
statements  often  made  by  those  less  well  informed.  As  a  full 
exhibit,  however,  would  not  the  lectures  have  been  more  satis- 
factory, if  the  author  had  discussed  the  Prophet's  idea  of  God, 
and  the  relation  of  Islam  to  the  state?  Certainly  the  truth  upon 
these  points  affects  the  ultimate  value  of  Mohammed's  mission. 

^So  competent  an  authority  as  Stanley  Lane  Poole  affirms  that 
Mohammed  in  part  destroyed  the  Arab  when  he  created  the 
Moslem,  and  that,  so  far  as  the  Arabs  alone  are  concerned,  he 
effected  a  temporary  good  and  a  lasting  harm.  This  must  be 
true  in  regard   to   their  free  and  wild  desert  life,  in  which   a 


188  ARABIC   LITERATURE. 

Islam  made  slow  advance  by  moral  means:  for  twelve 
years  persecution  dogged  the  steps  of  the  Prophet  and  a  few 
followers.  This  being  so,  for  the  next  eleven  years  the 
prophet  of  Allah  took  the  sword  and  conquered  all  Arabia. 
Intense  and  hot  hearted,  this  seemed  to  him  the  best ;  God 
would  have  it  so :  "  Fight  against  them,  until  there  be  no 
•opposition  in  favor  of  idolatry;  and  the  religion  be  wholly 
God's."^    The  instrument  of  God  was  at  hand,  created  for 

■world-wide  hospitality  and  certain  manly  virtues  and  a  better 
condition  of  womanhood  were  more  marked  characteristics  than 
in  the  Moslem-zealot  Arabia  of  later  years. —  Compare  Studies 
in  a  Mosque,  pp.  32,  33. 

'Ceaseless  War  Against  Infidels  is  Foeeveb  Binding.  Note:  — 
Compare  Koran,  Sura  48.  "Ye  shall  fight  against  them,  or  they 
shall  profess  Islam.  .  .  .  Fight  against  them  who  believe 
not  in  God  nor  the  Last  Day  .  .  .  until  they  pay  tribute 
l3y  right  of  subjection,  and  they  be  reduced  low."  This  was  said 
primarily  concerning  the  Arabs  of  the  desert:  the  course  of  Ish- 
mael  in  Arabia  being  not  unlike  that  of  Israel  in  Canaan. 

Such  Capitulations  (laws  embodied  in  chapters)  of  the  Otto- 
man Empire  as  relate  to  dealings  with  foreign  nations,  were 
published  by  the  United  States  in  1880  —  being  Executive  Docu- 
ment Number  Three  of  a  Special  Session  of  the  Senate, —  by 
"which  it  is  made  clear  that  it  is  still  the  binding  duty  of  Mos- 
lems to  make  war  upon  unbelievers,  for  the  propagation  of  the 
faith  or  laying  tribute,  so  that  no  truce  is  to  be  made  except  so 
far  as  it  is  for  the  Mussulman  interest,  and  then  no  lasting 
truce.— Pp.   25,  26. 

It  is  apparent,  however,  from  the  Koranic  texts,  that,  at  the 
first,  Mohammed,  recognizing  the  truth  of  the  revelation  under- 
lying Judaism  and  Christianity,  intended  to  make  no  war  upon 
the  Jews  or  Christians,  or  at  the  least  they  were  not  classed  as 
infidels  against  whom  war  was  never  to  cease.  The  substantial 
unity  of  Moslem,  Jewish  and  Christian  faith  in  God  and  the 
Jewish  revelation,  is  noted  in  Sura  II,  59,  and  III,  198.  Say  (to 
the  Jews),  "Between  us  and  you  let  there  be  no  strife"  (XLII, 
14).  "Dispute  not,  unless  in  a  kindly  sort,  with  the  people  of 
the  Book;  save  with  such  of  them  as  have  dealt  wrongfully  with 
you:  and  say  ye,  we  believe  in  what  hath  been  sent  down  to  us 
and  hath  been  sent  down  to  you,  our  God  and  your  God  is  one" 
(XXIX,  6,  Rodwell's  translation).  The  direction  in  IX,  29,  was 
apparently  one  of  the  latest  of  the  revelations,  war  being  made 


THE  ERA  OF  CONQUEST.  189 

this  purpose,  in  the  view  of  the  prophet ;  and  he  took  it, — 
the  wild  warrior  tribes  ready  at  his  beck.  The  neighbors  of 
Confucius  and  Gautama,  the  early  Hindus,  and  the  fisher- 
men of  Judea,  were  not  warriors  on  horseback.  The  system 
of  Confucius  was  propagated  by  schoolmasters,  of  Gautama 
by  monks,  of  Brahma  by  peaceful  priests,  of  Christianity 
by  preaching  and  the  practice  of  virtues  needed  in  the 
Roman  Empire,  but  the  Mohammedans  for  centuries  relied 
on  multiplying  the  faithful  by  political  conquest  rather 
than  by  spiritual  regeneration, —  so  greatly  did  the  Arabs 
contrast  with  the  people  among  whom  other  great  religions 
had  birth.  The  Prophet's  amazing  personal  magnetism 
awakened  an  enthusiastic  loyalty.  When  Abu  Chathama 
went  home  from  the  army  to  get  grain,  the  day  was  hot, 
and  he  found  that  his  wives  had  pitched  the  tents  in  the 
shade  of  his  garden.  These  they  sprinkled  for  coolness, 
and  they  prepared  refreshing  meat  and  drink.  But  when 
he  looked  at  it  all  he  said :  ' '  The  Apostle  of  Allah  is  exposed 
to  the  sun  and  the  wind  and  the  heat ;  and  shall  I  spend  my 
time  with  my  wife  in  the  cool  shade  before  a  spread  table  ? 
That  is  not  right.  I  will  not  enter  your  tent,  but  follow 
Mohammed."  He  turned  away,  and  as  soon  as  his  grain 
was  ready  mounted  his  camel  and  sought  the  desert. 

It  would,  however,  be  a  great  mistake  to  think  of  the 
ultimate  conquests  as  prompted  solely  by  religious  zeal,  as 
much  so  as  to  think  of  Alexander's  wars  as  primarily 
designed  to  propagate  the  Greek  mythology.  The  Sara- 
cens were  warriors  bent  on  plunder  and  the  creation  of  an 
empire,  and  with  their  widening  secular  power  they  carried 
their  religion.  It  was  the  red  right  arm  of  Ishmael.^ 
They  swept  along  the  lines  of  least  resistance.  No  religion 
of  power  nor  nation  of  force  stood  in  their  way.  There 
was  a  relatively  open  field  for  a  positive  faith  and  the 

upon  the  Jews  for  treachery;   they  were  not  to  be  "converted," 
but  to  be  humbled  and  subject  to  tribute.     And  this  seems  to 
have  been  the  rule  after  that. 
^Genesis  16:  12. 


190  ARABIC  LITERATURE, 

progress  of  armed  bands  of  fanatics.  Military  adven- 
turers flocked  to  the  Saracen  standards;  and  tens  of  hun- 
dreds of  cities,  towns,  castles  were  reduced,  and  thousands 
of  the  churches  of  what  they  believed  to  be  an  idolatrous 
Christianity  were  destroyed.  Within  four  score  years  fol- 
lowing the  Ilegira,  the  Saracen  proved  to  be  a  mightier 
military  power  in  Northern  Africa,  in  Asia  Minor  and 
Syria  than  the  armies  of  ancient  Rome.  Spain  in  the  Far 
West,  and  India  in  the  Far  East,  received  the  Koran  at  the 
point  of  the  sword,  so  that  a  vast  multitude  of  Moslems 
.settled  down  to  dwell  amid  diverse  nationalities ;  and  every- 
where a  coherent  system  was  organized,  and  a  newly  sub- 
jugated world  responded  to  the  ideas  of  the  Prophet  of 
Arabia. 

As  to  the  Koran,  it  is  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  the 
prophet  was  an  Oriental  visionary  rather  than  a  thinker. 
Rhetorical  emotion  is  to  be  looked  for  rather  than  the  bal- 
anced work  of  a  well-disciplined  mind.^  He  was  of  a  nerv- 
ous temperament,  full  of  passion,  with  no  small  vigor  of 
imagination.  He  could  not  write;  but  what  he  devoutly 
thought  or  saw  in  ecstatic  vision  was  dictated  to  disciples, 
sometimes  the  same  material  with  slight  changes  to  dif- 
ferent scribes,  who  in  part  kept  it  in  memory,  and  part 
was  written  upon  skins,  upon  shoulder  blades  of  mutton  or 
camel  bones  of  the  desert,  on  leaves  of  slate  or  polished 
stones,  on  leaves  of  palm,  on  bits  of  wood,  w^hich  were 
thrown  into  boxes  for  preservation:  and  when  finally 
arranged,  no  order  was  attempted,  save  to  put  the  longest 
compositions  first.-  The  work  was  twenty  years  in  the 
making,  yet  there  were  no  dates  affixed,  or  clues  by  which 
to  determine  them;  and,  in  the  order  that  was  at  last 
adopted,  material  of  different  dates  was  perhaps  inserted 
in  the  same  chapter,  the  transitions  being  so  abrupt  as  to 

^Renan  calls  the  Koran  a  collection  of  tlie  Prophet's  sermons, 
or  orders  of  the  day. 

^Compare  Reginald  Bosworth  Smith's  Mohammed  and  Moham- 
medanism, pp.  176,  215,  216.     Second  edition. 


THE  KORAN.  191 

make  the  work  less  attractive  to  Occidental  readers.^  Car- 
lyle  took  pains  to  give  the  world  to  understand  that  he  had 
a  special  pique  and  growl  against  the  Koran:  "A  weari- 
some, confused  jumble,  crude,  incondite;  endless  iterations, 
long-windedness,  entanglement,  insupportable  stupidity,  in 
short.  "^  And  the  polished  Edward  Everett,  President  of 
Harvard,  and  Minister  to  St.  James,  confessed  that  he 
could  not  read  it  through  as  a  literary  task.^  It  is,  how- 
ever, affirmed  by  Mr.  Stanley  Lane  Poole  that  this  tedious- 
ness  was  due  to  the  bad  translation  by  which  it  was  first 
made  known  to  Englishmen;  that  it  is  only  two-thirds  the 
size  of  the  New  Testament,  as  to  the  number  of  verses,  and, 
by  the  omission  of  the  Jewish  patriarch  stories,  only  so 
long  as  the  four  Gospels  and  the  Book  of  Acts ;  and  yet,  he 
says,  "There  is  probably  no  book  that  is  more  talked  about 
and  less  read  than  the  Koran."*  The  beauty  of  the  stj'le, 
according  to  another  authority,  consists  mainly  in  a  fre- 
quent informal  rhyming  by  the  use  of  words  of  which  the 
dosing  syllables  are  similar ;  as  if,  in  English,  words  should 
end  with  "-ing,"  or  "-ose."  "With  his  Oriental  contem- 
poraries, there  is  no  doubt  that  his  hterary  merit  gained 
great  influence  for  the  Prophet:  and  to  the  Eastern  mind 
it  has  been  a  delight  to  think  of  the  Koran  as  coming  down 
from  Heaven,  where  it  had  always  existed  as  a  tablet  by 
the  side  of  God's  throne. 

The  Arabs,  so  easily  won  by  the  matchless  beautj^  of 
Mohammed's  style,  were  a  singularly  poetical  people  before 
the  advent  of  the  Prophet,  and  copies  of  the  poems  that 
won  the  prize  at  the  great  National  Fair  were  ' '  suspended ' ' 
in  every  part  of  the  peninsula,  some  of  which  have  come 

^Professor  H.  P.  Smith's  The  Bible  and  Islam,  p.  27. 

Of  the  Koran,  Professor  E.  H.  Palmer's  translation  is  the  best; 
in  Max  Miiller's  Sacred  Books  of  the  East.  Lane's  Selections  are 
arranged  under  subjects.  The  Translation  by  Rodwell  sought  to 
arrange  the  chapters  in  chronological  order. 

''Heroes,  p.  59.     (II.  The  Hero  as  Prophet.)     London,  1840. 

^Orations  and  Speeches,  Vol.  II,  p.  272.     Boston,  1850. 

^Compare  pp.  115-121,  Studies  in  a  Mosque. 


192  ARABIC   LITERATURE. 

down  to  US.  If  there  were  not  great  poets,  the  poetic  gift 
was  widely  extended  among  the  people.  The  verses  were 
chanted  or  sung,  passing  from  lip  to  ear,  and  stored  in  the 
memory  of  youth  to  be  rehearsed  in  after  years.  Nor  were 
the  poets  mere  idle  players  at  rhyme  and  metre;  their 
hands  were  hardened  by  the  sword-hilt  and  smoothed 
through  hurling  the  ^pear;  and  their  musical  words  sug- 
gested the  freedom  of  the  encampment,  the  gleaming  of 
the  sun,  and  the  winds  and  rains  of  the  desert.^ 

The  Arabic  literature  comprises  works  of  romance,  of 
biography,  theology,  mathematics,  astronomy,  botany  and 
chemistry;  and  the  intellectual  empire  of  Islam  was  widely 
extended;  Tabari,  of  Baghdad,  composed  forty  pages  a 
day  of  Koranic  commentary  and  of  history,  it  was  said, 
for  forty  years.  The  most  important  literary  work,  how- 
ever, outside  of  the  Koran,  was  that  of  gathering  the  tra- 
ditions that  related  to  the  Prophet;  to  this  is  due  much  of 
the  coherency  of  Islam,  it  being  what  the  earliest  Mussul- 
man thought  befitting  the  Prophet,  what  perhaps  he  would 
have  said  in  regulating  the  national  policy  upon  points 
where  the  Koran  is  silent.  This  body  of  tradition  was 
gathered  up  during  two  hundred  years,  some  of  it  at  fourth 
hand,  it  being  said  that  it  was  said  that  it  was  said  that  it 
was  said  by  the  Prophet.  Mohammed  himself  opened  wide 
the  door  for  the  traditions  of  men,  in  the  one-hundredth 
verse  of  second  Sura:  "Whatever  verse  we  shall  abrogate 
or  cause  thee  to  forget,  we  will  bring  thee  a  better  than  it, 
or  one  like  unto  it."  There  are  two  hundred  and  twenty- 
five  verses  in  the  Koran  which  the  Moslem  doctors,  learned 
in  casuistry,  pronounce  to  be  now  abrogated  in  spirit.^  It 
was  only  by  such  adaptation,  that  the  Koran  was  in  some 
measure  fitted  for  the  wider  promulgation  that  came  to  it 
through  the  Saracen  conquests.  That  magnificent  move- 
ment of  wild  tribes  —  taldng  to  themselves  a  rude  disci- 
pline, and  suddenly  breaking  out  upon  an  astonished  world 

Wide  Article  in  The  Nation,  December,  1904,  by  D.  B.  Mac- 
donald,  LL.  D. 

^'Haines'  Islam,  p.  32.     London,  1889. 


LIMITATIONS  OF  THE  KORAN.  193 

and  offering  to  its  affrighted  people  immediate  killing  or 
the  Koran, —  pushed  the  Prophet's  idea  and  his  book  far 
beyond  his  original  intention;  and  the  limitation  of  his 
original  intention  clung  to  the  sacred  writings  in  their 
widely  extended  reign.^  His  religion  was  designed  to  be 
local,  and  wherever  it  gained  a  warrior's  foothold  it  never 
lost  its  original  armory,  so  pinched  and  quaint.  And  the 
work  of  Islam,  so  helpful  for  ages  to  so  many  widely  sep- 
arated peoples,  has  been  so  restricted  by  the  limitations  of 
its  original  charter  as  to  do  less  for  the  domestic  and  social 
and  intellectual  needs  of  the  races  under  its  guidance  than 
a  progressive  civilization  requires. 

As  a  literary  influence,  in  its  relation  to  the  Moslem 
mind,  the  Koran  has  been  hampered  by  two  limitations, — - 
its  lack  of  variety  and  freedom.  Comparing  it  with  the 
Bible :  it  was  twenty  years  in  the  making  instead  of  sixteen 
hundred,  and  the  product  of  one  mind  instead  of  the  minds 
of  more  than  two-score  principal  writers  besides  certain 
minor  poets  and  historians;  and  it  relates  to  a  narrow 
nomadic  life  instead  of  a  cosmopolitan;  and  while  the 
Bible  commends  a  spirit  of  inquiry,  the  Koran  precludes 
mental  freedom.  Mohammed  insisted  upon  it  that  his 
work  was  to  be  accepted  as  an  unerring  and  unchangeable 
rule  in  all  departments  of  Moslem  life  and  thought,  and 
although  there  has  been  more  freedom  than  was  at  first 
contemplated  and  a  changing  of  rules  through  the  agree- 
ment of  the  Moslem  people,  yet  the  final  result  of  it  has 
been  that  during  the  last  five  centuries  slight  contribution 
to  the  intellectual  wealth  of  the  world  has  been  made  by 
Islam.2 

^Mohammed  was  a  poet  rather  than  a  theologian,  a  prophet 
rather  than  a  legislator:  as  soon  as  the  Moslems  paused  in  their 
career  of  conquest  and  began  to  think  at  all,  they  thought  of 
this. —  MacdonalcVs  Development  of  Moslem  Theology,  Jurispru- 
dence, and  Constitutional  Theory,  p.  12S. 

-Compare  Bryce's  Studies  in  History  and  Jurisprudence,  p.  659. 
Oxford,  1901:  the  phraseology  of  this  sentence  being  in  part  that 
of  Professor  Bryce. 

13 


194  CHRISTIAN   LITERATURE. 


V. 


In  dealing  with  the  beginning  of  Hebrew  story,  and  with 
the  origins  of  peoples  slowly  emerging  from  the  obscurity 
of  remote  antiquity  —  as  China,  India,  Egypt  and  Assy- 
ria,—  it  is  to  be  looked  for  that  literary  processes  must  be 
extended  through  many  hundreds  of  years  for  reducing  to 
orderly  historical  form  the  masses  of  early  tradition  writ- 
ten and  oral,  fragments  of  national  annals,  the  body  of 
ancient  social  customs,  documents  that  reveal  the  civic 
usages  of  many  generations,  the  relics  of  centuries  of  song, 
the  life-like  legends  of  warriors  and  kings,  and  the  kin- 
dlings of  early  sacrificial  fires, —  so  that  the  very  earliest 
attempts  to  arrange  the  imperfect  data  will  be  at  first 
rewritten  at  later  periods ;  and  then,  later  still,  the  approxi- 
mate determination  of  the  true  order  of  events,  and  the 
separation  of  the  authentic  from  the  legendary,  must  be 
finally  fixed  by  the  interpretations  agreed  upon  by  special 
students  of  the  literature  in  the  clearer  light  of  subsequent 
ages :  it  is  only  in  this  way  that  there  is  finally  formulated 
that  revised  conception  of  a  limited  and  local  history  which 
fits  into  that  which  is  universal  —  the  plan  of  God  — 
authenticated  by  imperishable  testimony. 

From  this  point  of  view,  whoever  opens  the  Sacred  Books 
of  the  great  religions  of  the  world  will  be  at  once  impressed 
by  the  comparative  preponderance  of  fact  in  the  Christian 
Bible.  The  Hindu  books  are  composed  of  hymns  and 
chants,  prayers  and  formulas  of  service,  discussions  upon 
the  divine  nature,  heroic  poems,  legendary  and  speculative 
histories  of  the  universe.^     The  Buddhist  books  comprise 

^"The  Sanskrit  language  contains  nothing  of  genuine  history, 
no  national  annals,  no  biography  of  eminent  patriots,  statesmen, 
■warriors,  philosophers,  poets  or  others,  who  have  figured  on  the 
theatre  of  Indian  life  public  or  private.  Not  a  single  page  of 
pure  historical  matter  unmixed  with  monstrous  and  absurd  fable 
is  extant,  or  probably  was  ever  written  in  it." —  Calcutta  Review, 
V,  pp.  12-14. 

Upon  this  point,  Professor  E.  W.  Hopkins  remarks: — That  for 
the   earlier  period   the   annals    of    India    were    perpetuated   by 


HISTORIC   MATERIAL.  195 

the  sayings  of  Gautama,  a  great  number  of  treatises,  rules 
of  discipline,  statements  of  controverted  points,  stories  of 
the  saints,  lyrical  and  didactic  poems,  poems  by  monks  and 
by  nuns,  tales  and  fables,  and  books  upon  spirits  and  their 
abode  and  the  conditions  of  life  in  different  worlds.  The 
Nine  Chinese  Classics  are  constituted  by  one  book  of  briefly 
stated  events  that  occurred  in  the  court  and  state  of  Loo 
during  two  hundred  and  forty-two  years,  two  books  of  the 
acts  and  words  of  Confucius  and  Mencius  as  detailed  by 
their  disciples,  and  all  the  other  books  are  made  up  of 
treatises  and  directions  on  manners  and  customs,  the  con- 
versation of  kings  and  ministers  upon  the  principles  of 
patriarchal  government,  and  a  selection  of  odes.  The 
Koran  contains  moral  reflections  and  theology,  hortations 
and  proclamations,  ceremonial  and  civil  law,  condemna- 
tions of  idolatry,  grotesque  fables  and  traditions,  and  leg- 
endary stories  of  Hebrew  prophets  and  patriarchal  saints 
who  were  made  mouthpieces  to  reprove  the  sins  of  Arabia 
in  the  time  of  Mohammed.  The  Bible,  upon  the  other 
hand,  is  more  than  half  of  it  historical,  or  gathered  up 
literary  material  for  history.  The  influence  of  this  differ- 
ence in  the  world's  sacred  books  has  made  itself  felt  in 
the  distinctive  intellectual  training  of  Christendom;  giving 
a  certain  respect  for  facts,  and  creating  a  demand  for  facts 
to  go  upon. —  the  very  veracity  of  the  New  Testament 
biography  being  supported  by  the  historical  matter  out  of 
which  it  grew.  And  the  non-historical  and  non-biograph- 
ical portions  of  the  Bible  have  exercised  a  greater  influence 
in  the  intellectual  life  of  Christendom  on  account  of  their 

inscriptions  and  not  by  historic  literature;  that  the  older  Sans- 
krit has  no  history  save  a  romantic  biography  of  Buddah;  that 
there  was,  however,  an  attempt  at  preparing  chronicles  of  the 
kings,  A.  D.  1200-1600,  more  or  less  tinctured  by  romance;  that 
much  valuable  material  is  to  be  found  in  the  history  of  Kash- 
mere;  that  the  late  Professor  Biihler,  an  eminent  authority, 
maintained  that  veritable  history  is  to  be  found  in  India;-  and 
that  "monstrous  and  absurd  fables"  appear  also  in  the  records 
of  Livy. 


196  CHRISTIAN    LITERATURE. 

connection  with  a  body  of  facts  that  have  proved  to  be  of 
surpassing  sociological  interest  in  their  relation  to  the  moral 
development  of  mankind. 

It  is  of  interest  that  the  great  religious  books  pertain  to 
antiquity  so  remote,  manifesting  themselves  as  moral 
powers  in  educating  the  historic  childhood  and  youth  of 
mankind.  It  is  more  than  a  hundred  and  twenty  genera- 
tions of  men  since  the  earliest  date  of  events  recorded  in 
the  Chinese  Classics.  The  earliest  well  authenticated  event 
referred  to  in  the  Sanskrit  Books  is  as  distant  as  the 
Hebrew  Exodus.  Confucius  is  by  thirty  generations  ante- 
dated by  the  Mosaic  epoch.  For  two  thousand  years  before 
they  were  heard  by  Mohammed,  the  Hebraic  stories  of  the 
patriarchs  were  told  around  nomadic  camp  fires.  To 
Greece  and  Rome  the  Hebrew  Bible  appeared  to  be  the 
oldest  book  in  the  world/  relating  to  the  earliest  events; 
the  Jewish  settlement  in  Palestine  having  been  more  than 
six  centuries  before  the  founding  of  Eome  or  the  first  date 
that  can  be  fixed  in  Greek  history. 

VI. 

The  influence  of  the  Bible  upon  Christian  literature  is 
but  a  story  of  yesterday.  The  patristic  apologies  for  the 
faith  and  the  discussions  of  medieval  schoolmen  sufficed 
for  the  centuries  that  had  no  printing  press.  For  all  these 
ages  the  dogmatic  contents  of  the  Bible  were  kept  from 
the  common  people :  when,  therefore,  by  translations  and 
by  the  press,  the  common  people  finally  got  hold  of  it,  the 
Bible  effected  a  social  and  moral  upheaval,  not  unlike  that 
in  force  which  is  wrought  by  cosmic  energy  when  pent  up 
inner  fires  shatter  the  crust  of  the  globe.  Or,  if  this  be  not 
a  just  statement,  let  it  be  said  that  the  Bible  manuscripts, 
in  peril  from  the  pagans,  were  piously  preserved  in  monas- 
teries and  slowly  multiplied  by  devout  hands,  and  read  by 
the  spiritual  guides  who  could  not  entrust  illiterate  laymen 

•Harnack's  Expansion  of  Christianity,  pp.  14,  354,  358. 


INFLUENCE  OP  HEBREW  THOUGHT.  197 

"with  the  written  charter  of  the  Church, —  yet,  when  the 
popular  conscience  was  aroused  and  rectified  by  a  written 
moral  law,  when  the  people  discerned  God  as  actively 
administering  a  kingdom  among  men,  when  they  felt  the 
touch  of  a  sympathizing  Saviour  and  the  renewing  power 
of  the  Spirit,  when  every  man  had  access  to  an  open  Bible, 
the  great  truths  that  had  given  primitive  Christianity  such 
power  in  the  Imperial  Empire  and  that  had  nurtured  the 
spiritual  life  of  the  few  during  twelve  hundred  years  of 
Christianized  Roman  power,  now  took  possession  of  the 
common  people  and  effected  the  shaking  off  of  venerable 
churchly  traditions  throughout  Northern  Europe,  creating 
a  new  Germany  and  a  new  England.^ 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  happy  influence  of  the 
revival  of  classical  learning  upon  Southern  Europe,  awak- 
ening new  tastes,  new  arts,  new  philosophy,  it  is  certain, 
as  to  the  Germans  and  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  the  Hugue- 
nots, that  they  received  their  great  impulse  toward  a  new 
life  by  popular  acquaintance  with  those  great  Bible  truths 
which  proved  to  be  gigantic  powers  in  awakening  the  slum- 
"bering  North.  Not  all  that  was  best  in  mediaeval  literature, 
nor  the  immoral  productions  of  later  Rome,  nor  the  philoso- 
phy of  the  great  sages  who  looked  out  on  the  blue  Mediter- 
ranean, availed  to  reach  the  hardy  and  hardly  civilized 
sons  of  the  sea  pirates  and  Saxon  warriors  in  their  dark 
forests,  and  on  the  foggy  islands  of  the  Baltic  and  the 
stormy  tides  of  the  "West.  So  far  as  concerns  the  revival 
of  learning,  it  was  to  them  the  most  important  thing  in  it, 
that  ' '  Greece  arose  from  the  dead  with  the  New  Testament 
in  her  hand." 

It  is  a  striking  illustration  of  the  merely  ritualistic  char- 
acter of  what  the  classic  lands  called  religion  that  they 
gave  to  Europe  no  Greek  and  Roman  religious  literature. 
"When  Gaul  and  Germany  and  Britain  first  saw  the  stand- 
ards of  the  Roman  legions  —  and  possibly  a  little  later  a 

'A  new  France  and  possibly  a  new  Spain  might  have  been 
added,  could  to-day's  light  have  shone  on  yesterday. 


198  CHRISTIAN    LITERATURE. 

few  Greek  vases, —  the  conquering  cohorts  carried  about 
with  them  no  religious  ideas.  The  Hindu  sages  and  Gau- 
tama and  Confucius  gave  religions  or  philosophies  of  prac- 
tical life  to  myriads  of  men,  who  perpetuated  their  thoughts 
during  milleniums  of  history:  even  Arabia  took  the  cue, 
and  put  forth  a  Prophet  armed  Avith  a  book  and  a  sword. 
But  Greece  and  Rome  bequeathed  to  the  nations  of  Europe 
neither  a  religious  literature  nor  a  popular  practical  phi- 
losophy. Delphi  had  no  words  for  after  ages,  and  the 
pontiffs  on  the  Tiber  prepared  no  Bibles.  Aristotle  was 
esteemed  by  the  scholars  for  his  physics,  his  rhetoric,  his 
logic;  and  the  stoical  apothegms  of  Antonius,  Epictetus 
and  Seneca  delectated  occasional  hours  for  a  handful  of 
readers.  Cicero  had  no  valuable  religious  counsel  to  offer. 
Socrates,  with  an  intellectual  method  that  will  endure  as 
long  as  life  upon  our  planet,  spoke  with  uncertain  sound 
concerning  those  great  truths  which  Paul  proclaimed  on 
Mars'  Hill  and  in  the  Mamertine  prison;  and  the  sweet 
words  of  Plato,  no  wiser  than  his  master,  were  mainly  for- 
gotten in  the  grim  centuries  that  followed  the  fall  of  Rome. 
AVhatever  were  the  elements  of  intellectual  and  moral  life 
which  ushered  in  the  new  age  to  Northern  Europe,  they 
were  inherited  from  the  sacred  literature  of  the  Hebrews 
and  the  Apostolic  Christian  Church, —  and  their  popu- 
larization by  translations  and  printing  revolutionized  the 
thinking  of  the  Germanic  nations.^ 

The  first  effect  in  England  was  the  creation  of  a  vast 
body  of  dramatic  and  poetic  literature  unique  in  its  rapid 
development,  and  unique  in  its  sources.     Classical  learning 

^Can  it  be  said  that  he  is  a  thoughtful  student  who  ventures 
to  affirm  that  the  great  changes  wrought  in  the  North  Land  in 
the  fifteenth,  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  sprang  from 
the  experience  of  manltind?  Africa  and  China  also  had  experi- 
ence; Southern  Asia,  too,  Japan  and  Arabia.  The  evolution  of 
the  moral  sense  in  Northern  Europe  was  the  direct  outcome  of 
the  sacred  literature  of  Christendom,  when  for  the  first  time  it 
was  brought  before  the  eyes  of  every  one  who  could  read,  with 
liberty  to  read  it. 


LITERARY   EFFECT    OF    THE    BIBLE.  199 

was  made  to  contribute,  the  mediasval  imagination  was 
seized  upon,  Christian  ideas  were  made  prominent,  and  the 
portrayal  of  current  life  formed  the  main  stock, —  all  being 
rooted  in  the  plays  of  churchly  tradition  that  had  long 
entertained  the  populace,  so,  at  first,  drawing  their  vital- 
ity from  ecclesiastical  dramatic  usage.  Sharply  contrasted 
with  all  this  was  the  course  of  the  more  serious  minded, 
who  gave  themselves  to  sermons,  and  to  preaching  in  print 
through  controversial  pamphlets.  The  modern  methods  of 
absorbing  the  surplus  energies  of  a  people  were  not  then 
largely  developed, —  as  the  legal  calling,  medical  learning, 
the  educational  function;  the  smft  traversing  of  the  seas, 
the  railway,  and  varied  manufacturing  interests;  the  lead- 
ers of  mind  took,  rather,  to  bespattering  each  other  with 
printer's  ink.  From  all  this  was  evolved  the  modern  news- 
paper, and  the  less  ephemeral  popular  literature.  The 
formation  of  an  enlightened  Christian  public  opinion,  to 
which  kings  give  heed  and  demagogues  bow,  is  due  largely 
to  the  quill  driving  propensities  of  the  English,  and,  in 
respect  to  secular  affairs,  it  has  ultimately  proved  a  factor 
in  civilization  not  second  to  the  pulpit.  The  modem  press 
represents  the  consolidated  public  opinion  of  Christendom. 
The  power  of  the  news-press  to  focus  the  eyes  of  a  hundred 
million  people  upon  an  individual  gives  to  every  man  that 
sense  of  living  in  publicity  which  leads  him  to  exercise  care 
how  he  lives ;  he  finds  that,  will  or  nil,  he  must  be  measured 
by  a  Christian  ideal  of  character.  So  it  has  come  about  in 
the  modern  age  that  a  mechanical  invention  has  appeared 
in  the  drear  chronology  of  the  nations  to  dispute  rank  with 
royalty ;  the  steam  press  serving  as  a  preacher  of  righteous- 
ness, and  voicing  the  minds  of  millions  of  men.^  It  is  this 
intelligent  public  sentiment  that  has  afforded  a  working 
basis  and  popular  support  for  a  most  influential  literature. 
The  cultivation  of  the  fine  arts  is  —  as  truly  as  litera- 

*The  recent  news-press  establishment  in  most  of  the  large  cities 
of  China,  and  the  power  already  achieved  by  a  popular  press  in 
Japan,  promise  much  fou  the  future  of  Eastern  Asia. 


200  CHRISTIAN    LITERATURE, 

ture  —  an  expression  of  intellectual  life  among  all  peoples, 
conveying  moral  ideas  before  the  age  of  printing.  In  the 
portrayal  of  emotions  in  marble,  Christian  art  has  sur- 
passed the  Greek,  dealing  with  a  higher  order  of  spiritual 
life.  The  painter  and  the  sculptor  have  worked  upon  a 
more  elevated  plane  in  depicting  the  Virgin  rather  than 
Venus,  the  glorified  martyr  instead  of  the  gladiator,  and 
the  Last  Supper  in  place  of  a  bacchanalian  feast.  The 
artistic  imagination  of  races  into  whose  conception  there 
has  never  entered  the  All-Father,  has  to  do  with  lower 
artistic  ideals  than  those  which  relate  to  the  self-sacrificing 
divine  love  in  all  its  earthly  incidents.  Even  in  the  master 
building  of  the  religious  world  —  so  unique  and  effective 
in  Hindu  temples,  Buddhist  pagodas,  the  sacred  edifices  of 
China  and  the  mosques  of  Islam, —  there  has  been  a  certain 
freedom  of  thought,  stimulus  to  the  inventive  faculty,  and 
a  discipline  of  the  imagination,  connected  with  the  superior 
Christian  idea  of  Grod,  that  has  had  indubitably  a  most 
salutary  effect  upon  domestic  structural  contrivances  for 
the  convenience  and  comfort  of  the  common  people,  who  as 
the  children  of  God  are  better  housed  by  Christianity  than 
among  the  most  backward  races ;  while  the  educational  and 
industrial  buildings  of  Christendom  have  greater  merits 
as  works  of  art  than  most  contemporary  non- Christian 
palaces.  Then,  too,  the  majestic  creations  of  the  music- 
loving,  hopeful,  joyous,  triumphant,  singing  people  of 
Christendom  have  been  formed  upon  themes  which  make 
glad  the  average  man.  In  music  the  great  Eoman  people 
made  no  perceptible  advance  over  the  Greeks,  w^ho  had  no 
use  for  melodious  sounds  except  for  choral  dancing.  The 
Hindus  have  made  little  progress  in  the  art  during  hoary 
generations;  and  there  are  no  people  in  Asia  who  have 
more  than  a  rudimental  know^ledge  and  practice  of  this 
most  popular  and  most  influential  of  the  fine  arts.  Neither 
the  mythologic  gods  of  music,  nor  the  votaries  of  Brahma, 
Buddha,  Confucius,  or  Mohammed,  have  carried  this  art 
of  arts  to  any  such  length  toward  perfection  as  every-day 


PROSE  COMPOSITION.  201 

people  in  Christian  lands.  In  poetry,  the  fifth  of  the  fine 
arts,  there  is,  with  one  exception,  no  rival  people  to  dispute 
the  claim  of  the  Hebrew  and  the  Christian  to  the  first  rank ; 
and  the  conditions  of  life  have  so  chanj^ed  since  the  days 
of  Sophocles,  Aeschylus  and  Homer,  that  in  respect  to 
ideas  most  helpful  to  the  highest  manhood,  the  home,  the 
social  and  the  religious  life,  and  in  respect  to  variety  and 
perfection  of  metric  forms,  the  immortal  Greeks  are  quite 
removed  from  popular  interest  in  the  current  life  of  the 
modern  era. 

For  the  first  rank  in  artistic  prose  composition,  through- 
out that  vast  range  of  book  work,  which  in  an  easy  sense  is 
classified  as  literature,  there  is  a  broader  competition. 
AVhether  the  student  devotes  his  hours  to  the  wisdom  of 
Persia  and  India,  the  shrewd  apothegms  of  Stoic  philoso- 
phers and  of  Chinese  sages,  the  moral  maxims  of  Buddha, 
or  the  undying  fables  of  Oriental  story,  he  can  but  rejoice 
that  the  literary  faculty  has  been  developed  among  so 
many  peoples,  during  so  many  ages;  yet  when  he  once 
begins  to  search  the  libraries  of  the  world  and  to  analyze 
their  contents,  to  pace  up  and  down  the  long  galleries  of 
the  World  of  Books,  which  we  are  fain  to  designate  as  some 
sort  of  literature,  he  finds  that  Christendom  is  rich  beyond 
all  comparison  in  romance,  in  the  essay,  in  philosophy,  in 
history,  in  biography,  in  natural  science,  in  descriptions  of 
the  continents  and  the  races  by  the  ink-horn  of  the  traveler, 
and  in  Sacred  Books  which  are.  the  fountains  of  life  in 
every  age.  Whether  the  world-wide  non-Christian  litera- 
ture is  compared  with  the  Christian,  in  respect  to  the  sub- 
jects treated,  the  range  of  topics,  the  intrinsic  merit  of  the 
work,  or  its  influence  as  a  popular  educator,  it  is  inferior 
at  every  point. 

Literature,  in  its  widest  and  in  its  highest  sense,  is  to  be 
looked  at  as  a  part  of  the  world's  educational  appliances; 
the  average  man's  schooling  outside  the  alphabet  being, 
indeed,  less  important  as  a  quickening  force  than  the  ideas 
he  receives  by  heritage  from  the  literature  of  his  people, 


202  CHRISTIAN    LITERATURE. 

which  embodies  the  collected  wisdom  of  all  generations. 
The  intellectual  and  moral  power  of  any  people  bears  some 
direct  ratio  to  their  assimilation  of  the  most  valuable 
thoughts  of  their  predecessors,  and  they  stand  near  the 
head  of  the  world  who  can  avail  themselves  of  the  best 
ideas  of  all  mankind  and  embody  in  their  literature  every 
intellectual  conception  on  this  globe  that  is  adapted  to  the 
genius  of  their  own  people.  Conversely,  those  people  are 
near  the  foot  of  the  world  who  have  little  or  no  literature, 
or  who,  through  lack  of  popular  education,  are  unable  to 
read  what  they  have,  or  who  oppose  the  local  populariza- 
tion of  those  ideas  of  other  national  literatures  which  have 
proved  to  be  helpful  to  vast  populations  during  some  cen- 
turies. Nothing  is  so  amazing  to  the  philanthropists  who 
go  out  of  Christendom  as  to  find  that  the  world's  peoples 
have  nothing  to  read. 

Confucius  and  Gautama,  Mohammed  and  the  Vedie 
sages,  cannot  compete  with  the  Hebrew  prophets,  teachers, 
and  apostles,  unless  they  have  better  ideas.  That  race- 
stock  which  writes  what  a  competitive  examination  shows 
to  be  the  best  literature  in  the  world,  and  which  has  the 
power  to  assimilate  that  which  is  best  in  the  literature  of 
other  nations,  will  certainly  dominate  the  world's  thought 
to  endless  generations.  The  imperishable  quality  of  our 
Christian  literature  will  give  it  an  easy  ascendency  upon 
every  continent  and  isle,  whenever  the  world's  peoples  sit 
down  to  read  it,  including  as  it  does,  incidentally,  those 
thoughts  of  other  literatures  which  are  most  vital  to  moral 
and  social  progress. 

A  critical  analysis  of  the  modern  book  shows  that,  at  its 
best,  it  is  shot  through  and  through  with  Gospel  ideas  that 
have  come  to  be  the  heritage  of  the  common  mind  through- 
out Christendom,  Its  writer  assumes  Christian  truth, 
assumes  what  are  really  the  thoughts  of  God,  assumes 
immortality,  human  brotherhood,  and  the  conforming  of 
the  race  to  Christlikeness.  As,  upon  the  coast,  the  tone  of 
the  sea  is  always  in  the  air,  there  never  fails  a  voice  from 


COMPARATIVE  READERS  AND  LIBR^VRIES.  203 

out  the  Spiritual  World  in  all  modern  literature.  If  the 
spirituality  is  not  prominent,  "it  is  still  present  in  ever- 
recurring  suggestion,  as  we  feel  the  presence  of  the  sky- 
when  we  look  into  the  heart  of  the  summer  flowers  and 
know  that  without  it  they  could  not  have  been."^  It  is  the 
presence  of  this  spiritual  element,  as  a  moral  power  in 
daily  living,  that  differentiates  Christian  literature  from 
that  of  all  non-Christian  lands. 

VII. 

There  is  no  point  of  difference  between  Christian  and 
non-Christian  literature  more  notable  than  that  relating  to 
the  popularization  of  books.  The  Turkish  Empire  would 
have  to-day  ten  millions  of  books  in  local  libraries,  scat- 
tered here  and  there  in  different  cities  and  towns,  if  Islam 
favored  popular  education  by  literature  as  much  as  Chris- 
tianity did  in  Great  Britain  in  1880.  Take  Persia,  where 
the  people  are  nearly  all  Mohammedans:  that  kingdom 
would  have  to-day  eight  hundred  libraries  with  six  and  a- 
quarter  millions  of  books  in  them,  if  their  religion  favored 
popular  reading  as  much  as  Christianity  in  the  United 
States.  Two  hundred  millions  of  books  would  be  upon  the 
shelves  of  native  libraries  in  India  open  to  the  reading  of 
all  castes,  if  Brahmanism  were  the  match  of  Christianity  in 
America  for  diffusing  education  by  books.  Here  is  Bud- 
dhism :  there  ought  to  be  more  than  thirty-five  hundred  libra- 
ries here  and  there  in  Japan  with  almost  thirty  millions  of 
volumes  in  them,  and  there  ought  to  be  more  than  ten  mil- 
lions of  books  in  the  native  libraries  of  Ceylon,  Siam,  and 
Burma  to-day,  if  their  faith  were  as  good  a  popular  educa- 
tor by  books  as  Christianity  is  to-day  in  the  United  States, 
China,  the  most  literary  of  the  non-Christian  nations,  has  no 
books  to  speak  of,  aside  from  one  library  of  one  hundred 
and  sixty-eight  thousand  volumes,  and  small  libraries  in  the 
eighteen  provinces,  and  little  gatherings  of  books  in  the 

^Hamilton  "W.  Mabie  in  the  Andover  Review.    October,  18S6. 


204  CnRISTI.VN    LITERATURE. 

Buddhist  monasteries;  but  if  Confucianism  were  as  good  a 
patron  of  books  as  Christianity  in  America,  there  would  be 
in  the  Celestial  Kingdom  to-day  more  than  twenty-nine 
thousand  libraries,  each  averaging  eighty-five  hundred  vol- 
umes. Christianity  is  a  reading  religion.  When  Saul,  in 
the  old  story,  saw  any  strong  man,  or  any  valiant  man,  he 
took  him  unto  himself.  Strong  and  valiant  books  are  in 
demand  throughout  Christendom.  The  mighty  men  of 
valor  are  the  men  of  ideas.  The  mental  on-going  which  is 
so  characteristic  of  the  Christian  peoples  is  through  their 
conquering  so  many  books,  and  taking  to  themselves  some- 
thing of  their  mighty  personality,  as  savage  tribes  believe 
that  they  grow  stronger  for  every  new  scalp  of  a  hero. 
The  mightiest  of  the  sons  of  men  await  the  readers  in  small 
country  libraries  throughout  the  most  favored  areas  of 
Christendom;  the  voice  of  the  orator  is  heard,  and  the 
songs  of  the  poet,  and  here  the  historian  rolls  up  like  a 
scroll  the  story  of  the  ages,  and  hands  it  to  every  schoolboy ; 
to  the  wondering  eyes  of  the  world's  youth  the  student  of 
natural  science  pictures  the  work  of  God  in  laying  the  foun- 
dations of  the  globe ;  and  hither  come  the  seers  and  apostles 
of  faith  to  proclaim  the  love  of  God  and  the  coming  down 
of  the  New  Jerusalem  out  of  heaven  to  beautify  the  earth. 

To  take  up  another  point  as  to  the  diffusion  of  literature, 
the  non-Christian  faiths  may  be  asked  to  match  these  two 
statements : — 

The  American  Board  in  seventy-five  years  issued  so  many 
pages  of  Christian  print  for  distribution  in  foreign  parts, 
that  the  leaves  bound  up  as  books  would  fill  eight  miles  of 
shelf -room : 

Not  until  the  Brahmans,  the  Buddhists,  the  Confucian- 
ists,  and  the  Mohammedans  of  the  world  unite  together  and 
annually  flood  Christendom  with  381,166,106  pages  of  non- 
Christian  literature,  will  they  do  just  what  the  united  mis- 
sion presses  are  now  doing  with  Christian  literature  for 
non-Christian  lands. 

To  take  up  another  point  —  the  comparative  circulation 


COMPARATIVE  CIRCULATION  OF  SACRED  BOOKS.  205 

of  Sacred  Books.  Not  until  the  erudite  scholars  of  China 
send  forth  JMencius  and  Confucius  in  four  hundred  and 
twenty-six  translations/  and  scatter  them  broadcast 
throughout  Africa  and  among  the  American  aborigines,  as 
well  as  among  the  white  barbarians,  shall  we  believe  that 
their  philosophy  of  life  will  prevail  among  all  nations.- 
Not  till  the  monks  of  Buddha  translate  the  life  of  Gau- 
tama into  every  tongue  under  heaven,  and  their  wealthy 
votaries  in  Burmah,  Siam,  and  the  Isles  of  the  Rising  Sun 
send  the  story  to  America  and  Europe  for  popular  distri- 
bution, and  to  the  dwellers  upon  every  sea,  shall  we  think 
that  their  system  of  faith  will  win  the  approbation  of  all 
men.  Not  until  the  Brahmans  of  India  annually  circulate, 
as  a  whole  or  in  part,  3,286,834  copies  of  their  Sacred 
Books,  will  they  match  the  Christian  yearly  reproduction 
of  the  Bible.  Not  till  Islam  circulates  throughout  the  world 
three  hundred  million  copies  of  the  Koran,  in  whole 
or  in  part,  will  they  do  what  Christians  have  done  with  the 
Bible.^  There  are  a  thousand  philologists  to-day  engaged 
in  translating  or  reviewing  translations  of  the  Christian 
Scriptures  for  use  in  non-Christian  lands.  Nearly  thirty 
thousand  dollars  a  week,  year  in,  year  out,  are  expended  by 
the  English  speaking  people  in  distributing  the  Bible 
throughout  the  globe. 

When  we  speak  of  the  comparative  literature  of  the  dif- 
ferent peoples  and  religions,  there  is  a  notable  virility  in 
Christianity,  as  to  the  character  of  the  literature  produced, 
the  popular  use  made  of  it,  and  its  altruistic  circulation. 

'This  is  the  number  of  Bible  translations  listed  by  Dr.  Robert 
Needham  Cust. 

-The  Confucian  books  are  distributed  as  a  matter  of  business, 
and  not  otherwise,  in  China. 

'Five  translations  of  the  Koran  have  been  made  by  Moslem 
scholars,  always  interlined  with  the  original  Arabic. —  Stanley 
Lane  Poole,  personal  letter.  The  Arabic  is  used  in  all  countries 
in  public  readings  at  the  mosques. 


CHAPTER    SIX  :     CONTRASTS    IN   MORAL 
THOUGHT. 

The  ethical  contents  of  the  world's  Sacred  Books,  even 
by  casual  examination,  reveal  the  most  striking  contrasts  in 
those  great  motives  which  underlie  moral  conduct.  The 
bearing  of  these  ideas  upon  practical  life  is  of  no  small 
interest  from  a  sociological  point  of  view.  In  considering 
them,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  each  of  the  great  religions  is 
much  more  than  a  system  of  theology.  For  example,  in 
India,  domestic  customs  and  the  caste  system  are  vital  to 
Hinduism,  and  in  China  ancient  usage  has  more  weight 
than  any  ethical  theory.  It  is  no  part  of  the  intent  of 
this  chapter  to  present  a  complete  view  of  the  dogmatic  or 
philosophical  systems  of  the  great  religions,  which  is  out- 
lined in  every  good  encyclopedia,  but  allude  only  to  certain 
contrasted  phases  that  are  practically  related  to  daily  life. 


EELATING     TO    WORSHIP, —  THE    IDEA    OP    GOD. 

What,  for  example,  can  be  in  greater  contrast,  than  the 
words  of  Jesus  to  the  Samaritan  w^oman  that  neither  in  holy 
mountain  nor  holy  city  should  men  worship  the  Father,  but 
everywhere  worship  God,  the  Spirit,  in  spirit  and  in  truth,^ 
and  the  record-  made  by  Sir  Alfred  C.  Lyall  in  India : — 

The  extraordinary  religious  confusion  that  still  prevails 
throughout  India  leads  one  to  think  of  that  land  as  one 
in  which  the  primitive  paganism  with  all  its  incoherency, 

iJohn  4:  21,  23,  24. 

'Asiatic  Studies.  London,  1882.  This  work  contains  most 
careful  observations  made  during  twenty-seven  years'  residence. 
The  paragraph  following  in  the  text, —  with  the  specifications 
(1)  to  (11), —  is  based  upon  pp.  2-28  passim,  and  287,  288;  the 
wording  being  changed  in  part. 


HINDU  TnOUGHT.  207 

deficient  in  organic  structure  and  dominant  ideas,  has  sur- 
vived. Extinguished  as  it  was  centuries  since  in  Europe 
and  Western  Asia,  we  find  the  disorderly  supernaturalism 
of  pre-Christian  ages  in  India.  Stepping  out  of  our  mod- 
ern western  world,  we  there  find,  going  on  before  our  eyes, 
what  we  have  read  in  ancient  books.  It  is  the  nearest  sur- 
viving representative  of  a  semi-civilized  society's  religious 
state,  as  it  existed  in  Western  Asia  and  Europe  before 
Christianity  and  Mohammedanism.  To  those  who  collect 
their  notions  of  the  Indian  religion  out  of  the  sacred  books 
of  India,  the  Brahmanic  mythology  and  ceremonial  may 
appear  to  furnish  a  comprehensive  system.  But  closer 
observation  discovers  a  jumble  of  contradictory  ideas  and 
practices,  a  medley  of  popular  superstitions  underlying 
authoritative  ritual,  and  that  total  indifi'erence  to  plan  or 
unity  which  indicates  a  religion  rudimentary  and  unorgan- 
ized. It  is  not  only  disorganized  but  dilapidated,  as  to  any 
system;  owing  in  part  to  varying  political  conditions,  as. 
that  of  the  Mohammedan  conquest.  Some  of  the  deities 
abhor  a  fly's  death,  others  still  delight  in  human  victims. 
It  is  a  tangled  jungle  of  disorderly  superstitions  relating  to 
ghosts  and  demons,  demigods  and  deified  saints,  household 
gods,  tribal  gods,  local  gods,  universal  gods.  In  Europe 
men  associate  religion  with  the  idea  of  a  church,  a  settled 
organic  form,  and  they  assume  that  the  Hindus  have  built 
up  a  definite  system,  while  really  there  is  no  common  bond. 
It  is  an  ancient  religion^  still  alive  and  powerful,  which  is 
a  mere  troubled  sea  without  shore  or  visible  horizon,  driven 
to  and  fro  by  the  winds  of  boundless  credulity  and  gro- 
tesque invention.  The  Province  of  Berar  in  Central  India, 
as  it  was  in  1868,  illustrates  these  statements;  there  being 
in  this  district  one  hundred  and  fifty-five  thousand  Mos- 
lems with  two  million  and  ninety-five  thousand  Hindus. 

^Modern  Hinduism  is  the  direct  outgrowth  of  the  Brahmanism 
of  the  earliest  historical  ages,  without  a  break  in  the  continuity, 
a  religion  in  unceasing  flux. —  Compare  Chapter  II,  p.  26,  note, 
supra. 


208  THE  IDEA  OF  GOD. 

The  everyday  religious  practice  of  the  middle  class  Hindus 
falls  within  one  or  more  of  the  following  divisions : — 

(1)  Those  who  worship  stocks  and  stones,  and  local  con- 
figurations of  unusual  or  grotesque  size,  shape  or  position; 
this  worship  reproducing  itself  and  extending  in  Berar^ 
under  the  eyes  of  the  observer  —  an  oddly  shaped  jutting  hit 
of  rock,  a  huge  boulder  lying  alone  in  the  plain,  a  circle  of 
stones,  a  peculiar  mark  on  a  hillside,  a  hummock  on  a  hill 
top,  an  ancient  carved  pillar,  a  milestone  marked  with 
strange  hieroglyphics  unexpectedly  set  up  where  none  was 
before,  a  telegraph  post,  fossils  with  their  shell  marks, —  all 
being  objects  of  worship;  in  every  case,  an  expert  Brah- 
manic  explanation  being  always  at  hand  and  producible  — 
some  signification  being  contrived  or  sanctioned  to  justify 
and  authorize  the  custom ;  the  common  people,  at  first  with- 
out a  second  meaning  in  their  adoration,  paying  reverent 
attention  to  the  unaccountable  and  startling  expression  of 
an  unknown  power: 

(2)  Those  who  worship  inanimate  things  with  mysterious 
motion :  brooks ;  springs ;  rivers ;  rushing,  roaring  torrents ; 
the  sun,  a  tribal  god  among  the  northern  hills  of  Berar; 
trees,  waving  branches,  and  weird  out-sounding  of  tree  or 
branch  in  the  wind,  solitary  trunks,  dark  groves: 

(3)  Those  who  worship  animals  that  are  feared, —  as 
tigers,  wolves,  serpents: 

(4)  Those  who  worship  things  animate  or  inanimate  that 
are  directly  or  indirectly  useful  or  profitable,  or  which  pos- 
sess any  incomprehensible  function  or  propriety, —  as  tool 
worship;  the  Thugs  worshipping  the  pickaxe  carried  for 
burying  their  victims,  the  farmer  praying  to  his  plow,  the 
weaver  to  his  loom,  the  fisher  to  his  net  :^ 

(5)  Those  who  worship  a  spirit,  or  vague  impersonation 
of  the  uncanny  sensation  that  comes  over  one  at  certain 
places ;  when  cutting  wood  on  a  hillside,  a  clump  is  left  for 
the  elf  abiding  in  that  wood: 

'Compare  Habakkulc,  1:  IC. 


HINDU   THOUGHT.  209 

(6)  Those  who  worship  the  spirits  of  persons  once  known 
to  the  worshippers : 

(7)  Those  who  worship  at  the  shrine  of  persons  of  note 
who  died  in  some  unusnal  waj'-, —  as  M.  Raymond,  the 
French  commander,  who  died  at  Hyderabad;  and  General 
Nicholson  of  Delhi,  1857  : 

(8)  Those  who  worship  in  temples  persons  of  note,  as 
demigods  or  subordinate  deities;  or  who  worship  the 
shrines  raised  to  anchorites  and  those  dying  in  the  odor  of 
sanctity,  of  which  the  numbers  are  very  large  in  Berar,  and 
constantly  increasing,  some  having  already  rank  in  richly 
endowed  temple  worship : 

(9)  Those  who  worship  manifold  local  incarnations  of 
the  elder  deities  and  of  their  symbols : 

(10)  Those  who  worship  departmental  deities: 

(11)  Those  who  worship  the  supreme  gods  of  Hinduism, 
and  their  ancient  incarnations  and  personifications  as 
handed  down  by  the  Brahmanic  Scriptures.  Yet  the  old 
order  has  been  continually  though  slowly  changing,  giving 
place  to  new  manifold  deities,  which  press  upon  the  earlier 
divinities  of  creation,  preservation  and  destruction;  the 
direct  or  primary  worship  of  these  three  divinities,  espe- 
cially of  Brahma  the  creator,  being  comparatively  rare, 
their  original  names  having  gone  mostly  out  of  ritualistic 
use.^ 

Conscious  of  his  own  intellectual  supremacy  and  moral 
uprightness,  desiring  the  knowledge  of  God,  inquiring  after 

^The  History,  Literature  and  Religion  of  the  Hindus,  by  Will- 
iam Ward,  third  edition,  in  two  volumes,  London,  1817,  devotes 
two  hundred  and  eighty-eight  pages  to  a  most  impressive  exhibit 
of  the  objects  of  Hindu  worship.  Professor  M.  Monier-Williams' 
work  on  Brahmanism  and  Hinduism  has  also  a  very  full 
statement. 

The  Free  Church  of  Scotland  Quarterly  adds  to  the  specifica- 
tions in  the  text,  supra,  the  worship  of  the  moon,  stars  and  sky; 
of  clouds,  rain,  thunder,  lightning,  and  the  rainbow,  the  earth, 
the  sea,  the  fire;  the  ox,  cow,  dog,  kite,  crow,  peacock,  lizard 
and  rat;  the  fish,  tortoise,  and  crocodile. 
14 


210  THE  IDEA  OF  GOD. 

God,  the  Brahman  recognizes  the  presence  of  divine  power 
in  everything,  and  actuated  by  a  sense  of  loyalty  to  the 
truth  he  encourages  the  people  to  worship  everything,  so 
multiplying  rites.  On  the  part  of  the  people,  Brahma  is 
neglected,  because  his  work  being  finished  nothing  more  can 
be  obtained  from  him  ;^  and  the  sacred  books  for  ages  have 
represented  the  newer  gods  as  crowding  out  the  old  ones, — 
and  there  are  sharp  words  of  rivalry,  denouncing  this  god 
or  that.- 

While  the  Hindu  masses  are  divided  into  sects  with  rival 
deities,  the  more  intelligent,  a  few  among  the  great  multi- 
tude, cling  to  the  older  and  purer  faith  of  the  fathers, 
who  worshipped  without  idols  or  temples  an  energetic 
Aryan  battlegod  of  marked  personality,^  the  supreme  organ- 
izer of  the  world  and  of  inferior  deities.*  Yet  so  accus- 
tomed is  the  Hindu  mind  to  having  some  symbol  in  the  hour 
of  worship,  that  Lyall  speaks  of  a  very  shrewd  native  officer 
of  fair  education  who  in  his  devotions  addressed  five  round 
pebbles,  from  the  bed  of  the  Narbada  river  or  the  Gaudaki, 
which  are  employed  in  the  worship  of  Siva  and  Vishnu.  It 
was  by  the  devotee  thought  of  as  representative  worship;^ 
in  his  mind  it  might  not  have  been  essentially  different 
from  the  devout  use  of  the  cross  in  Christendom  as  the  sym- 
bol of  the  Divine  Mercy.  It  is  the  theory  of  the  Brahmans 
that  all  the  worship  of  the  inferior  castes  is  symbolical  and 
that  it  is  better  for  the  untrained  people  to  have  idols  and 

^He  is  unloving  and  unloved.  The  popular  heart  turns  to  the 
inferior  deities  who  can  be  moved  by  human  wants. —  Hardwicks' 
Christ  and  Other  Masters. 

^'Consult  W.  J.  Wilkins'  Modern  Hinduism,  pp.  54,  399,  45,  46. 

'Professor  E.  Washburn  Hopkins, —  manuscript  notes. 

'Mitchell's  Hinduism,  pp.  20,  21,  249,  201,  202.  Also  Monier- 
Williams'  Hinduism,  pp.  22-25,  31,  32.     1885. 

'^For  representative  worship,  consult  Monier-Williams'  Brah- 
manism  and  Hinduism,  pp.  69,  70.     New  York. 

"If  God  is  everywhere,  he  is  of  a  truth  in  the  idol.  Where 
there  is  faith,  there  is  God." —  R.  A.  Hume,  D.  D.,  Parliament  of 
Religions,  II,  1271. 


HINDU   THOUGHT.  211 

sacred  places.^  The  idea  of  one  God  in  India  was  never 
developed  beyond  the  point  of  being  the  First  Cause,  or 
more  exactly  the  Arranger  of  all  existent  things;  this  in  the 
late  Vedie  period,  degenerated  into  a  conception  of  deity 
who  was  to  be  primarily  thought  of  as  both  Arranger  and 
Arrangement  of  all  things  —  Itself  the  Order  of  the 
World.-  From  it  there  arose  the  Hindu  system  of  panthe- 
ism; it  being  taught  that  the  original  Arranger  can  be 
known  only  through  subordinate  deities,  or  the  povrers  of 
nature,  or  in  man ;  not  that  nature  is  truly  God  or  the 
expression  of  a  divine  life,  but  God  is  all  and  in  all,  and  out- 
side Him  there  is  no  reality  in  the  universe.  It  is  true  that 
in  the  going  by  of  the  ages  the  Brahmanical  priesthood  has 
been  supported  by  offerings  made  to  this  idolatry  or  that, 
and  that  the  Brahmans  have  never  brought  the  millions  into 
touch  with  their  Creator  as  a  God  with  whom  they  have  to 
do,^ — nor  has  the  average  man  in  India  been  practically 
led  by  polytheistic  worship  —  based  upon  a  spiritual  pan- 
theism —  into  any  clearer  perception  of  that  impersonal 

^Lyall's  chapter  in  The  Great  Religions  of  the  World,  New 
York.  Yet  this  was  met  by  Cicero  with  the  question,  "Who  can 
tell  but  the  people  may  come  to  believe  that  these  stones  and 
pictures  are  the  gods  themselves?" 

'"To  the  Hindu  there  is  in  the  universe  but  one  —  call  it  being, 
call  it  essence,  call  it  thing  —  there  is  but  one,  the  Pan,  the  All, 
the  Universal,  Brahma.  No  man,  no  thing  is  so  separated  from 
it  as  to  have  been  created  by  it.  There  never  has  been  creation, 
only  emanation  from  the  Universal  It.  It  is  ignorance  to  say  that 
there  is  a  God.  There  is  no  essential  difference  between  man 
and  a  stone."  "To  philosophical  Hinduism  the  Infinite  Brahma, 
a  word  of  neuter  gender,  is  the  Universal  It,  without  those  attri- 
butes which  we  have  in  mind  when  we  use  the  imperfect  word 
'personality';  therefore  without  holiness  and  incapable  of 
expressing  or  receiving  what  we  call  love." — Rev.  R.  A.  Hume, 
D.  D.,  of  Ahmednagar,  paper  read  at  the  Parliament  of  Religions. 

'So  in  Christendom  the  clerical  order  has  from  apostolic  times 
been  maintained  by  the  laity;  and,  where  the  faith  has  been  cor- 
rupted, the  laity  have  been  taught  to  approach  God  only  through 
ecclesiastical  formulas. 


212  THE  IDEA  OF  GOD, 

Power  dimly  conceived  of  as  his  ultimate  Origin.^  The 
very  sincerity  of  myriads  upon  myriads  of  Hindu  devotees 
—  based  upon  what  is  true  in  their  faith  —  haunts  an  out- 
side beholder  like  a  horrible  nightmare :  the  naturally  reli- 
gious peoples  being  in  a  moral  quagmire,  the  outcome  of 
scores  upon  scores  of  generations  of  Brahmanical  guidance.^ 
To  the  Buddhist  founder  the  keen  sighted  Prince  of 
India,  emerging  from  what  seemed  to  him  the  Brahmanical 
darkness  in  which  he  was  born,  there  was  vouchsafed  no 
vision  of  God  as  a  fixed  personality ;  if  he  did  not  think  his 
pantheistic,  polytheistic,  idolatrous  neighbors  right,  neither 
in  his  judgment  were  the  early  sages  right.  He  saw  the 
inward  beauty  of  many  moral  duties :  had  he  as  clearly  seen 
God,  then  indeed  the  light  that  is  brighter  than  the  sun 
would  have  dawned  in  the  East.  During  fifteen  hundred 
years  before  his  time,  the  Vedic  faith  had  so  degenerated 
that  when  the  Prince  of  India  came  to  think  it  all  over, 
during  six  years,  he  did  not  believe  in  that  Brahmanical 
pantheism  which  alone  in  his  day  stood  in  the  place  of  the 
conceptions  of  deity  which  had  been  held  by  the  primitive 
sages  of  his  nation.  He  saw  the  boundless  errors  of  the 
crude  polytheistic  worship,  based  always  upon  the  intel- 
lectual error  of  pantheistic  notions,  and  he  cut  clear  of  the 
whole  of  it,  and  gave  to  the  teeming  millions  of  the  East 

^"The  ordinary  Hindu  who  practices  the  most  corrupt  form  of 
polytheism  is  never  found  to  deny  the  doctrine  of  God's  unity. 
He  will  always  maintain  that  God  is  essentially  one,  that  he 
exhibits  himself  variously,  and  that  he  is  to  be  worshipped 
through  an  endless  diversity  of  manifestations,  incarnations,  and 
material  forms." —  Monier-Williams,  Brahmanisvi  and  Hinduism, 
pp.  475,  476.     Fourth  edition,  Macmillan,  1S94. 

In  like  manner  the  common  man  holds  also  to  pantheism, 
believing  himself  to  be  a  part  of  God. —  Mitchell's  Hinduism,  p. 
177;  W.  J.  Wilkins'  Modern  Hinduism,  p.  319. 

*The  self-contradictory  characteristics  of  the  Hindus  are  thus 
summed  up  by  Barth: — "They  are  at  once  sensual,  superstitious, 
and  speculative,  with  an  equal  appetite  for  theosophy  and  coarse 
exhibitions,  and  they  have  never  been  able  to  rest  satisfied  with 
faith  in  one  God,  or  reconcile  themselves  to  the  worship  of  many." 


BUDDHIST  THOUGHT.  213 

for  more  than  sixty  generations  a  world  without  a  God.^ 
That  is,  so  far  as  his  thought  controlled  them :  since  ulti- 
mately his  followers,  particularly  in  the  north  of  Asia,  wor- 
shipped him  as  the  Enlightened  One,  the  earthly  incarna- 
tion of  the  Supreme  Deity,  at  peace  in  Nirvana  until  a 
new  Buddha  shall  visit  the  earth."  As  Hinduism  is  divided 
into  sects  following  divers  gods,  so  Buddhism  has  many 
schools  with  various  interpretations  of  their  primal  theo- 
ries, as  of  Nirvana,  and  as  to  the  worship  of  Buddha ;  there 
being  seven  principal  sects  in  Japan,  subdivided  twenty- 
two  times.^  The  Singhalese  Buddhist  catechism  says  that 
a  personal  God  is  regarded  by  the  Buddhists  as  only  a  gigan- 
tic shadow  thrown  upon  the  void  of  space  by  the  imagina- 
tion of  ignorant  men ;  yet  the  Buddhists  of  Ceylon  —  out- 
side their  books  —  believe  in  a  personal  God.*  The  Bud- 
dhists of  Burmah,  representing  the  cult  in  its  most  pure 
form,  still  regard  Gautama  as  the  ' '  enlightened ' '  man : 
repeating  the  formula, — "I  venerate  the  doctrine  of  Bud- 
dha," rather  than  "I  worship  Buddha. "°  There  is,  how- 
ever,  no   doubt  that   in   popular   Buddhist   theology,   the 

'For  the  Gautamic  denial  of  a  Supreme  Being,  vide  Max  Miil- 
ler's  introduction  to  the  Buddhaghosha  Parables,  pp.  38,  39.  1870; 
Chips  from  a  German  Worship,  I,  227;  Monier-Williams'  Bud- 
dhism, pp.  121,  122,  537,  539;  vide  also  the  citations  in  Professor 
Kellogg's  Light  of  Asia,  pp.  176-183.  London,  1885.  There  is  in 
Buddhism,  says  Koppen,  "no  God,  no  spirit,  no  eternal  matter; 
there  is  only  an  eternal  Becoming,  no  eternal  Being." 

In  the  Buddhist  philosophy,  the  idea  and  expression  of  a  begin- 
ningless  and  endless  cause  and  effect  seems  more  reasonable  than 
that  of  a  self-existent  First  Cause. 

-Bishop  Titcomb  (pp.  108,  109)  affirms  that  the  images  of 
Buddha  are  not  worshipped,  but  contemplated  as  an  aid  to  rever- 
encing the  virtues  and  memory  of  Gautama.  The  Thibetan  wor- 
ship of  the  primal  Buddha  as  the  only  God  is  thought  by  Bunsen 
to  be  not  older  than  the  tenth  century  A.  D. —  God  in  History,  I, 
369,  370. 

^Missionary  Herald.    Boston.     August,  1892. 

*The  Rt.  Rev.  Reginald  S.  Copleston,  Bishop  of  Columbo,  Bud- 
dhism, pp.  478,  482. 

''Nisbet's  Burma  under  British  Rule,  p.  109. 


214  THE   IDEA  OF  GOD. 

apotheosis  of  Gautama  is  so  secure  in  the  hearts  of  hundreds 
of  millions  of  disciples  that  it  cannot  properly  be  said  that 
they  are  as  godless  as  their  Sacred  Books.^  The  massive 
images  of  Buddha  have  been  for  a  thousand  years  counted 
among  the  wonders  of  the  world ;  and  the  pagodas  of  Japan, 
Burmah  and  Siam  are  the  most  elaborately  adorned  build- 
ings in  Asia.  The  Siamese  voluntary  contributions  for  the 
temples  and  the  monks  are  some  twenty-five  million  dollars, 
annually  in  a  population  of  but  six  millions.  Many  Bud- 
dhists are  deeply  imbued  with  religious  feelings.'  "I  am 
old  and  I  am  a  woman,  but  I  will  tell  you  what  thoughts  I 
have,"  said  an  aged  Japanese,  of  the  Shin  Shin  sect,  to  Dr. 
A.  H.  Bradford,  of  the  American  Board  deputation.  "I 
am  weak  and  sinful  and  I  have  no  hope  in  myself ;  my  hope 
is  all  in  Amida  Buddha.  I  believe  him  to  be  the  Supreme 
Being.  Because  of  the  wickedness  of  man,  and  because  of 
human  sorrow,  Amida  Buddha  became  incarnate  and  came 
to  the  earth  to  deliver  man;  and  my  hope  and  the  world's 
hope  is  to  be  found  only  in  his  suffering  love.  He  has 
entered  humanity  to  save  it,  and  he  alone  can  save.  He 
constantly  watches  over  and  helps  all  who  trust  in  him.  I 
am  not  in  a  hurry  to  die,  but  I  am  ready  when  my  time 
comes,  and  I  trust  that  through  the  gracious  love  of  Amida 
Buddha  I  shall  then  enter  into  the  future  life,  w^hich  I 
believe  to  be  a  state  of  conscious  existence,  and  where  I  shall 
be  free  from  sorrow.  I  believe  that  he  hears  prayer,  and 
that  he  has  guided  me  thus  far,  and  my  hope  is  only  in  his 
suffering  love.  "^ 

^"Buddha  is  the  joy  of  the  whole  world,  the  helper  of  the  help- 
less, the  very  compassionate,  more  powerful  than  the  most  power- 
ful, able  to  bestow  Nirvana  on  him  who  only  softly  pronounces 
his  name,  or  gives  in  his  name  a  few  grains  of  rice.  The  eye 
cannot  see  anything,  the  ear  cannot  hear  anything,  nor  the  mind 
think  of  anything  more  excellent  or  more  worthy  of  regard  than 
Buddha." —  Hardy's  Manual,  p.  360. 

^Monier-Williams.     BuddMsm,  p.  552. 
.  'Dr.  Bradford  in  The  Outlook.     New  York,  1896.     As  Christian- 
ity has  sometimes  done.  Buddhism  appears  at  times  to  have  taken 
on  the  color  of   its  local   surroundings,   assimilating  prevailing 


CHINESE  THOUGHT.  215 

It  was  the  lack  of  the  religious  element  in  Confucianism 
that  gave  the  Buddhists  a  foothold  in  China. ^  ' '  Honor  the 
gods,  and  keep  them  far  from  you,"  is  a  saying  of  Confu- 
cius.^ The  sage,  says  Professor  Douglas,  did  not  deny  the 
idea  of  God,  but  ignored  it.  Confucius,  to  avoid  irrever- 
ence, designated  the  Supreme  Power  by  the  vague  term 
"Heaven."  To  him  it  is  due  that  the  official  worship  still 
survives;  yet  his  general  attitude  was  such  as  to  infect  the 
Chinese  philosophy  with  atheism;  and  the  worship  of 
Heaven  has  degenerated  into  the  bestoAval  of  honor  upon 
the  impersonal  spirit  of  the  world  and  the  powers  of 
nature.^ 

It  was  said  by  Pung  Kwang  Yu,  in  the  "Parliament  of 
Religions,""^  that  Confucianism  teaches  its  followers  to  keep 
aloof  from  spirits,  but  holds  them  in  respect;  and  that 
doing  them  reverence  is  to  refrain  from  giving  them  annoj''- 
ance;  and  that  religion  has  not  been  considered  as  a  desir- 
able thing  for  the  people  to  know  or  for  the  government  to 
sanction,  since  it  tends  to  dissension. 

China  has  had  the  knowledge  of  God  for  four  thousand 
years,^  a  Supreme  God  with  administrative  subordinate  dei- 

ideas  and  customs,  adapting  itself  to  Siam,  Tartary  or  Thibet. 
It  appears  as  if  the  ideas  of  the  early  Nestorians  in  China  had 
been  perpetuated  in  certain  Buddhist  monastic  liturgies  of  to-day 
in  Southern  China.  (Consult  Deal's  Catena,  pp.  397-409.)  In 
like  matter  the  citation  in  the  text  made  by  Dr.  Bradford  sug- 
gests ideas  quite  foreign  to  Gautama.  Dr.  lyenaga,  in  a  lecture 
course  in  Boston,  1904,  stated  that  Buddhism  in  Japan  is  in  some 
features  like  Catholicism. 

'Probably  every  Chinaman  believes  in  the  philosophy  of  Con- 
fucius and  ancestral  worship;  and  there  are  few  who  do  not  also 
worship  at  the  Buddhist  and  Taoist  temples. 

Wide  Martin's  Cycle  of  Cathay,  p.  228;  Lore  of  Cathay,  p.  178. 
This  sentiment  is  often  cited  by  gentlemen  in  Japan. —  Griffis* 
Religions  of  Japan,  p.  105. 

''Lore  of  Cathay,  pp.  166,  169,  176,  178. 

^President  Barrow's  Report  in  Two  Volumes,  p.  384. 

"The  idea  of  one  God  was  stereotyped  in  the  Chinese  language 
by  a  character  invented  at  least  five  thousand  years  ago;  the 
divine  name  is  familiar  in  the  earliest  historical  documents. — 
Legge's  Religions  of  China,  pp.  8-11,  59-62,  244,  245. 


216  THE  IDEA  OF  GOD. 

ties,  yet  for  more  than  thirty  centuries  the  hundreds  of 
millions  of  the  people  have  not  worshipped  Him.^  This  is 
in  effect  not  unlike  the  monotheism  which  earliest  appeared 
among  the  Aryans  —  so  soon,  however,  lost  in  degenerate 
Indian  worship;  in  agreement  also  with  the  testimony  of 
resident  missionaries  and  reputable  travelers  concerning 
Africa,  that  the  natives  everywhere  believe  in  a  Supreme 
God,  yet  render  to  Him  no  honor.  The  Chinese  Emperor 
lias  for  four  thousand  years  worshipped  the  true  God,  in 
an  official,  formal,  ritualistic  way,  in  behalf  of  his  people, 
and  for  more  than  thirty  centuries  twice  a  year ;  and  by  the 
custom  and  rule  of  the  realm  he  alone  performs  this  service.^ 
It  is  said  by  the  wise  that  their  reverence  hinders  their  wor- 
ship of  Heaven,  that  the  emperor  alone  is  worthy.^  And 
there  has  never  been  popular  instruction  in  the  knowledge 
of  God.  The  literature  of  the  sages  gives  to  God  scant  rec- 
ognition. In  the  five  relations  of  life,  v/hich  comprise  the 
whole  duty  of  man,  there  is  no  relation  to  the  All-Father. 
The  common  people,  unless  with  rare  exceptions,  have  no 
direct  communication  with  the  deity,  and  make  no  offering 
or  service.     From  time  immemorial  the  people  have  sought 

^Doctor  Legge,  Religions,  pp.  22-29. 

^^Dr.  Legge's  Religions  of  China,  pp.  33,  43-51;  and  Life  and 
Works  of  Mencius,  p.  263.  Philadelphia,  1875.  Compare  Edlvins' 
Religion  in  China,  p.  60. 

Legge's  Religions,  p.  54,  cites  a  Chinese  Record,  B.  C.  1766,  that 
illustrates  the  worship  of  God  by  the  emperor  as  the  representa- 
tive of  his  people,  standing  between  their  sins  and  the  Judge  of 
all.  T'ang  having  overthrown  the  dynasty  of  Shang,  in  announc- 
ing the  rules  of  a  new  life  under  the  new  reign,  said:  "When 
guilt  is  found  anywhere  in  you  who  occupy  the  myriad  regions, 
let  it  rest  on  me,  the  one  man.  When  guilt  is  found  in  me  the 
one  man,  it  shall  not  attach  to  you  who  occupy  the  myriad 
regions."  When  therefore  drought  and  famine  came,  it  was  sug- 
gested that  a  human  victim  should  be  offered  to  Heaven,  and 
prayer  offered  for  rain,  and  T'ang  said, — "If  a  man  must  be  the 
victim,  I  will  be  he."  Fasting,  and  guised  as  a  sacrificial  victim, 
he  went  into  a  mulberry  forest,  with  confession  and  prayer;  and 
the  rain  descended. 

^Lore  of  Cathay,  p.  167. 


CHINESE  THOUGHT.  217 

to  satisfy  their  religious  longings  only  through  the  expres- 
sion of  filial  piety  toward  their  ancestors  and  national 
heroes/  and  in  later  centuries  through  the  worship  of  such 
images  as  the  Buddhist^  and  Taoist  philosophers  have  given 
them.  During  more  than  four  thousand  years  the  average 
man  in  China  has  been  "without  God  in  the  world."' 

"There  are  fifteen  hundred  temples  in  China  for  the  worship  of 
Confucius.  The  emperor,  for  more  than  two  thousand  years,  has 
officially  worshipped  him  twice  a  year,  as  one  of  a  trinity  with 
■"Heaven"  and  "Earth."  (Lore  of  Cathay,  p.  179.)  More  than 
sixty  thousand  animals  a  year  are  provided  by  the  government 
for  sacrificial  offerings  at  the  Confucian  temples.  China,  by 
Robert  K.  Douglas,  p.  1G5;  Hardwick  Christ  and  other  Masters, 
II,  p.  32.     London,  1863. 

Whether  "worship"  or  "reverence,"  this  is  one  of  the  grounds 
lor  classifying  Confucianism  as  a  popular  "i-eligion,"  rather  than 
a  "philosophy"  as  it  is  often  designated  by  Chinese  scholars. 

-The  Chinese  government  has  not  objected  to  Buddhism,  since 
it  makes  no  attempt  to  regulate  the  family,  or  the  state,  or  to 
disturb  the  peace  of  the  world. —  Fung  Kwang  Yu:  in  report  of 
Parliament  of  Religions. 

Wide  Edkins'  Religion  in  China;  Confucianism  and  Taoism,  by 
Professor  Douglas.  London,  1879;  and  particularly  Legge's  four 
lectures  on  the  Religions  of  China  (London,  1880)  pp.  22-56;  and 
his  work  upon  the  Notions  of  the  Chinese  concerning  God  and 
Spirits,  pp.  24-31,  38,  57,  59,  61.     Hong  Kong,  1852. 

Concerning  ceremonial  worship  by  the  emperor,  the  Author 
received  a  letter  a  few  years  ago  from  Doctor  Legge,  in  which 
it  is  written: — "I  have  said  that  'the  people  were  debarred  from 
the  worship  of  God,'  and  that  they  were  'cut  off  from  the  worship 
of  God  for  themselves.'  It  would  seem  then  that  at  one  time,  a 
very  early  time,  it  was  allowable  for  them  to  worship  God.  I 
suppose  the  debarring  grew  up  by  immemorial  custom;  and  the 
ceremonial  worship  of  each  party  in  the  state  was  regulated 
according  to  its  social  position.  In  tlie  fourth  century,  B.  C, 
so  great  a  writer  and  teacher  as  Mencius  could  say,  'Though  man 
may  be  wicked,  yet  if  he  adjust  his  thoughts,  fast  and  bathe,  he 
may  sacrifice  to  God.'  Even  now  you  may  sometimes  see  an  old 
man,  poor  and  somewhat  ragged,  v.-ith  smoking  incense  in  his 
hand,  looking  reverently  up  to  the  sky,  and  bowing  reverently 
nearly  to  the  ground;  and  if  you  ask  him  what  he  means  by  all 
his  demonstrations,  he  will  reply  that  he  is  'worshipping  God,' 


218  THE  IDEA  OF  GOD, 

It  is,  however,  to  be  said  of  Confucianism  in  Japan  that 
the  acute  philosophers  who  were  attracted  to  the  Chinese 
Classics  seized  upon  Confucius'  doctrine  of  Heaven,  or 
Providence,  and  so  developed  it  that  the  world  itself  was 
conceived  of  as  instinct  with  a  divine  life  which  abides  also 
in  good  men  of  all  ages,  a  goodness  that  is  best  manifested 
in  loyalty  to  the  imperial  line  of  divine  descent.  This  doc- 
trine not  only  found  expression  in  the  high  ideals  enter- 
tained by  the  noblest  men  in  the  nation,^  but  it  was  so 
accentuated  by  singularly  illuminated  minds  as  to  voice 
clearly  that  doctrine  of  God  which  w^as  never  declared  by 
Confucius  :— 

"There  is  a  great  Lord  over  all.  This  Lord  is  the  great 
and  only  spirit.  He  is  the  Lord  and  Father  of  heaven  and 
earth  and  all  things.  From  the  mighty  universe  to  the 
tiny  mote,  from  the  eternity  to  the  moment,  there  is  nothing 
outside  of  his  glorious  regard.  His  mystery  fills  all  space 
—  God  of  God,  spirit  of  spirit."^  "God  is  not  distant,  the 
heart  is  the  house  of  God. '  '^ 

It  was  with  a  passionate  conviction  that  Mohammed 
believed  in  the  One  God,  as  a  Spirit,  self-existent,  eternal, 
and  perfect  in  all  of  his  attributes:  from  the  beginning 
down,  this  truth  nerved  his  followers  to  ceaseless  effort  to 
overthrow  idolatry,  whether  purely  ethnic,  or  masquerad- 
ing in  Christian  attire.*  This  Ishmaelite  revival  of  the  pri- 
or, 'colloquializing  the  Supreme  Name,'  'worshipping  and  appeal- 
ing to  His  Heavenly  Worship.' " 

At  wedding  ceremonies,  all  bow  before  Heaven.  By  some,  a 
stick  of  incense  is  burned  every  evening  under  the  open  sky. — 
Lore  of  Cathay,  p.  166. 

^Compare  Chapter  II,  pp.  34,  35,  supra. 

^Nakal  Tojio,  a  prophet  of  old  Japan,  cited  by  Miyagawa  in 
Dr.  De  Forest's  paper  added  to  President  C.  C.  Hall's  Christian 
Belief  Interpreted  by  Christian  Experience,  p.  251. 

^Muro  Kyuso. 

*Henry  O.  Dwight,  LL.  D.,  Constantinople.  Compare  Poole's 
Studies  in  a  Mosque,  pp.  91,  92. 

"It  was  because  Christianity  became  so  corrupted  and  debased 
in  the  ancient  Syrian  world,  originally  beginning  as  a  pure  insti- 


MOSLEM  THOUGHT.  219 

mal  revelation  of  God  to  the  Hebrew  patriarchs  has  won  for 
this  truth  the  cordial  acceptance  of  vast  multitudes  who 
would  never  have  otherwise  received  it.  This  doctrine  —  a 
part  of  every  prayer  five  times  daily,  "I  extol  the  perfec- 
tion of  God  the  Great, ' ' —  has  outworked  favorably  in  many 
lives.  A  son  of  Islam  is  always  deeply  religious,  his  reli- 
gion pervades  his  whole  life  and  his  life  is  more  or  less 
shaped  by  it;  if  there  is  one  characteristic  that  stands  out 
above  all  others  it  is  his  devotion  to  his  faith, —  he  will  do 
anything  for  it  as  the  supreme  faith  and  is  never  ashamed 
of  it.^  Dr.  "Wilson  A.  Farnsworth  affirms  that,  in  propor- 
tion, he  has  found  during  fifty  years  in  Turkey,  more  honor- 
able, upright  men  among  Moslems  than  among  Armenian 
Christians.^  Everyone,  says  Professor  Henry  Preserved 
Smith  —  intimate  with  Mohammedan  life, — will  testify  that 
men  are  not  rare  among  them,  earnest  and  conscientious, 
who  live  in  the  fear  of  God,  who  strive  to  do  his  will, 
and  whose  kindness,  benevolence,  and  fidelity  to  principle 
are  the  outworking  of  sincere  faith  in  Him.^  President 
Washburn,  of  Robert  College,  bears  striking  testimony  to 
the  honesty,  truthfulness,  and  benevolence  of  certain  Mos- 
lems, of  whose  sincere  desire  to  do  right  there  can  be  no 
doubt.*  And  this  indeed  should  be  so  from  the  moral  ideas 
set  forth  in  the  Koran,  which  exalts  virtue  and  condemns 
vice.  Pride  and  presumption  are  rebuked,  egotism  and 
harshness  of  spirit  are  denounced.  Uprightness  of  charac- 
ter is  demanded.  The  justice  of  God,  as  between  neighbors,, 
will  compel  everyone  (even  though  he  be  one  of  the  holy 
martyrs)  who  has  injured  another  to  restore  to  him  his  due 
at  the  judgment  day.     Lane,  in  his  Modern  Egyptians,^ 

tution,  that  Islam,  as  in  some  respects  a  superior  faith,  was  able 
to  choke  it  out."—  Curtiss'  Primitive  Semitic  Religion,  p.  240. 

'Personal  letter  from  Secretary  James  L.  Barton  of  the  A.  B.  C. 
F.  M.,  for  many  years  a  resident  in  the  Turkish  Empire. 

^Personal  letter. 

^The  Bible  and  Islam:  Compare  pages  317  and  229. 

*The  Message  of  the  World's  Religions,  p.  83.     New  York,  1898.. 

«Vol.  II,  p.  471.     Third  editon,  London,  1842. 


220  THE  IDEA  OF  GOD. 

says  that  he  has  often  heard  blessings  bestowed  by  Moslems 
when  abused  by  their  brethren;  to  every  angry  blow,  the 
-answer  being, — ' '  God  bless  thee,  God  requite  thee  good. ' ' 

It  is  impossible  to  form  even  a  slight  acquaintance  with 
the  Arabic  history  and  literature,  without  receiving  the 
impression  that  many  among  the  leaders  of  the  Moslem 
world  have  been  most  devout  in  seeking  to  serve  the  Most 
High,  according  to  their  best  knowledge.  A  beautiful 
illustration  is  found  in  Al-Ghazzali,  whose  quaintness  of 
apothegmatic  speech  recalls  Saint  Augustine.  "What 
rigidity  of  grasp  the  hand  of  Islam  would  have  exercised," 
says  Macdonald,  "but  for  the  influence  of  Al-Ghazzali, 
might  be  hard  to  tell;  he  saved  it  from  decreptitude,  and 
opened  before  the  orthodox  Moslem  the  possibility  of  a  life 
hid  in  God.  "^ 

The  moral  value  of  the  Sacred  Books  of  Judaism  and 
Christianity  is  found  in  what  relates  to  the  development, 
during  nearly  fifty  generations,  of  the  idea  of  God:  the 
Eternal  Spirit,  the  First  Cause,  the  Infinite  Intellect,  the 
Holy  Will,  the  Moral  Governor,  the  just  and  the  loving 
All-Father,  perfect  in  wisdom,  caring  for  his  cliildren. 

The  matured  Hebraic  idea  of  Jehovah  was  that  of 
Supreme  Wisdom,  the  source  of  orderly  thought  from  which 
proceeded  all  created  things.  Whether  this  idea  was 
reached  earlier  than  the  similar  thought  in  the  matured 
Greek  philosophy,  it  is  not  important  to  inquire.  The 
Supreme  Good  of  Plato  is  represented  as  the  Supreme  Kea- 

'A.  H.  450-505.  As  a  lecturer  at  Baghdad,  he  left  the  most 
brilliant  position  in  the  Moslem  Church,  at  the  age  of  thirty- 
eight,  and  devoted  himself  to  a  contemplative  or  mystical  life, 
for  the  attainment  of  spiritual  truth  by  direct  vision.  This 
course  he  pursued  for  ten  years  before  returning  to  Baghdad  to 
teach:  seeking  to  follow  the  true  path  to  the  knowledge  of  God. 
"A  complete  purifying  of  the  heart  from  all  but  God  is  the  path; 
a  seeking  to  completely  plunge  the  heart  in  the  thought  of  God 
is  its  beginning,  and  its  end  is  complete  passing  away  in  God." — 
Yide  The  Life  of  Al-Ghazzali,  by  D.  B.  Macdonald,  in  Journal  of 
the  American  Oriental  Society,  XX. 


HEBREW  AND  CHRISTIAN  CONCEPT.  221 

son,  intelligently  contemplating  possible  Types  or  forms 
prior  to  the  construction  of  Things.^  Our  Occidental  phil- 
osophy grew  out  from  this  Hebrew  and  Greek  concept  of 
a  self-conscious  Intelligence  in  which  the  Thinker  is 
detached  from  his  thought. 

The  difference  between  this  concept  and  that  of  the  Hin- 
dus makes  the  difference  between  India  and  England.  In 
all  that  pertains  to  civic  theory  and  scientific  thought,  to 
the  training  of  youth,  to  moral  theory,  to  philanthropy,  and 
to  expansive  moral  energy,  the  root  of  their  diverse  growths 
is  found  in  this.  The  entire  material  universe,  including 
whatever  is  of  spirit  in  humanity,  is  represented  by  Hindu 
thought  as  the  outward  expression  of  the  Supreme  Princi- 
ple of  Life  which  is  related  to  nature  and  to  human  life  as 
the  soul  to  the  body.  Opposed  to  this  is  the  thought  of 
Christendom,  that  God  is  the  conscious  directing  mind,  not 
so  much  expressed  by  the  universe  as  limited  by  it  in  his 
self  expression,  seeing  the  end  from  the  beginning,  and 
intent  upon  carrying  out  his  thought  and  plan  for  the  high- 
est well-being  of  the  moral  universe.  What  is  cosmic  evo- 
lution but  the  all-pervasive  tideflow  of  theistic  energy,  intel- 
ligence and  will?  So  near  is  the  modern  scientific  idea  of 
the  universe  to  the  Brahmanic  thought  of  God  —  so  near 
and  yet  so  far.  It  is  the  difference  of  personal  power,  per- 
sonal intelligence,  personal  will, —  or  so  expressed  as  to  sug- 
gest personality  through  the  self-imposed  limitations  of  cre- 
ative and  sustaining  power.  So  profound  were  the  early 
philosophic  sages  of  India, —  so  nearly  stating,  so  closely 
missing  a  theistic  interpretation  of  the  evolution  of  the 
universe. 

It  is  said  by  Huxley,  that  the  object  of  natural  science 
is  the  discovery  of  that  rational  order  which  pervades  the 
universe.-     That    the    "order"  is  —  throughout    Christen- 

^The  truths  of  reason  are  at  once  the  laws  of  thought  and  the 
archetypal  norms  of  all  existence. — Samuel  Harris,  The  Philo- 
sophical Basis  of  Theism.    New  York,  1883. 

^Lecture  on  the  Progress  of  Science  in  the  last  Half  Century. 


222  THE  IDEA  OF  GOD. 

dom  —  held  to  be  "rational,"  is  the  secret  of  the  advance- 
ment of  natural  science  among  such  peoples  as  are  philo- 
sophically actuated  by  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  thought  con- 
cerning God.  Modern  science  is  but  the  development  of  the 
idea  of  the  government  of  nature  by  the  reign  of  law  —  or 
iixed  rational  modes  of  action  —  discernable  by  reason. 

Of  ancient  and  modern  men  of  science  of  the  highest 
rank,  five  have  been  materialists,  says  Dr.  Dennert  of  Ber- 
lin :  fifteen,  agnostics ;  thirty-eight  have  given  no  opinion 
in  regard  to  theism;  and  the  two  hundred  and  forty-two 
remaining,  in  the  roll  of  three  hundred,  have  accepted  the- 
ism as  the  philosophic  basis  of  natural  science, —  and  their 
greatest  discoveries  have  been  through  their  search  for  that 
* '  rational  order  which  pervades  the  universe. ' ' 

If  the  appeal  be  made  to  natural  science,  it  must  be  said 
at  once  that  the  manifold  polytheism  based  upon  the  spir- 
itual pantheism  of  India,  the  negations  of  the  Buddhist 
books  and  deification  of  Gautama,  and  the  practically  athe- 
istic or  agnostic  attitude  of  the  Confucian  philosophy  con- 
nected as  it  is  with  popular  conceptions  of  secondary  spirit- 
ual causes  more  or  less  efficient  in  natural  causation,  are  all 
so  little  in  accord  with  the  thought  of  Christendom  about 
the  First  Cause  of  all  things,  as  to  be  without  value  in  form- 
ing a  hypothesis  for  studying  the  facts  of  the  universe. 

Throughout  the  non-Christian  world,  scientific  investiga- 
tions in  the  nineteenth  century  have  absolutely,  once  and 
forever,  done  away  with  all  mythological  notions  of  subor- 
dinate deities,  making  them  impossible  or  unthinkable  to 
any  well  informed  person  in  any  part  of  the  globe;  and 
these  studies  have  at  the  same  time  closed  in  upon  the 
advanced  thinkers  of  Christendom,  and  shut  them  up  face 
to  face  with  the  idea  of  one  Primal  Force  with  attributes 
of  what  may,  by  an  accommodation  of  term.s,  be  called  per- 
sonality —  without  thereby  limiting  the  Infinite, —  the  God 
"svith  whom  we  have  to  do,  who  made  all  that  is  made, —  so 
that   the   basis   of  all   Christian   scientific  thinking  is   as 


RAMAITE  THOUGHT.  223 

firmly  established  as  the  foundations  of  the  universe.^ 
India  and  China  at  the  dawn  of  history  had  an  idea  of 
Ood  not  unlike  that  of  the  Hebrew  founders  and  the  Pla- 
tonic wisdom,  but  India  and  China  in  popular  thought  lost 
sight  of  it  for  forty  centuries.-  Through  the  Hebrews  we 
have  the  beginnings  of  a  historic  self-revelation  of  the  moral 
attributes  of  God,  which  culminated  in  the  Christian  era. 
It  is  possible  indeed  —  if  not  at  first  then  at  last, —  that  the 
devout  Hebrew  thinkers  knew  more  about  God  than  Yao 

^It  has  been  remarked  by  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  that  "You  can- 
not take  up  any  problem  in  physics  without  being  quickly  led  to 
some  metaphysical  problem  which  you  can  neither  solve  nor 
evade." — Life  Everlasting,  by  John  Fiske,  p.  50.     Boston,  1901. 

^If  this  be  so  as  to  the  popular  thought  of  India  as  such,  it 
would  be  unjust  not  to  give  prominent  recognition  to  that  very 
powerful  sect  of  South  India,  which  has  made  itself  known 
throughout  the  North  —  the  Ramaism  of  Ramaxlma;  which,  dur- 
ing more  than  seven  hundred  years,  has  taught  that  the  All-God 
is  a  creative,  personal,  supreme  God,  that  thought  is  not  an  attri- 
bute of  Brahma,  but  Brahma  is  thought, —  the  one  and  only 
"being,  omniscient,  omnipotent,  the  all-wise  and  will-ing  God, 
■whose  spirit  permeates  and  animates  this  world. 

While  the  individual  soul  springs  from  Brahma  and  is  never 
outside  Brahma,  it  is  held  to  enjoy  a  separate  existence,  and 
that  it  will  remain  a  personality  forever. 

This  remarkable  Ramaite  sect,  founded  by  Ramanuja  or  one 
of  his  followers,  is,  in  respect  to  personal  salvation,  divided  into 
two  parts:  the  one  holding  that  God  saves  a  man  as  a  cat  takes 
up  a  kitten  which  exercises  no  free  will;  the  other,  that  a  man, 
in  order  to  be  saved,  must  reach  out  and  embrace  God  as  a 
monkey  does  its  mother. 

Both,  however,  agree  that  in  salvation  the  individual  departs 
from  the  earth  forever,  without  being  involved  in  endless  trans- 
migrations; to  remain  forever  in  paradise  in  undisturbed  per- 
sonal bliss. 

Vide  Hopkins'  Religions  of  India,  pp.  497,  49S,  500,  501.  Also 
in  Vol.  XXXIV  of  Miiller's  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  see  Thi- 
bauts'  Introduction  to  the  Vedunta-Sutras,  pp.  XXX,  XXXI. 

Remark  by  Pkofessor  Hopkixs: — This  important  aspect  of 
Hindu  thought,  which  comes  nearer  than  any  other  to  our  own, 
is  a  purely  native  theology,  untouched  as  Sikhism  is  touched 
in  the  North,  by  Moslem  influence. 


224  THE  IDEA  OP  GOD. 

and  Shun,  and  those  who  first  sang  the  Vedic  hymns,  and 
that  their  better  knowledge  led  them  to  transmit  it  with 
care  to  unending  generations  as  the  most  precious  heritage 
of  mankind.  The  being  of  God  is  held  by  the  Christian 
Scriptures  to  be  a  tenet  of  natural  religion,  the  invisible 
things  of  him  being  perceived  through  the  things  that  are 
made,  his  everlasting  power  and  divinity.^  It  is  to  the 
present  point  that  those  who  "hold  down"  this  truth  in. 
unrighteousness  are  put  to  a  final  moral  disadvantage^ 
through  the  natural  operation  of  selection  and  survival  in 
the  age-long  rivalry  of  races  and  religions.  Customs,  man- 
ners, morals  ultimately  become  as  rigid  as  iron  through 
what  the  world  thinks:  and  the  polytheistic  thinking  of 
India,  and  the  negations  of  Gautama,  and  the  practically- 
godless  influence  of  Confucius  place  Asia  by  the  side  of 
Africa  as  to  theistic  ideas,  with  eight  or  nine  hundred  mil- 
lions of  men  who  knew  God  ages  ago  and  have  not  glorified 
him  as  God. 

Are  not  people  known  by  the  company  they  keep  ?  The 
precious  conception  of  the  Supreme  God,  or  the  lower  con- 
ception of  the  Divine  Arranger  of  the  Universe,  was 
entrusted  to  a  priesthood  in  India  who  separated  them- 
selves from  the  commonality  as  a  divine  caste ;  and  for  more 
than  three  score  and  ten  generations  they  have  literally  sub- 
sisted upon  the  multiplication  of  subordinate  deities  and 
the  multiplication  of  manifestations  of  God,  and  upon  the 
upbuilding  of  the  most  highly  elaborated  idolatrous  poly- 
theism, rooted  in  pantheism,  which  the  world  has  ever  seen : 
and  the  inferior  castes  are  —  what  they  are  to-day, —  as  ta 
social  and  moral  development. 

'Romans  1:  19-20. 
^Romans  1:  18,  21-23. 


KRISHNAIC    DEVOTION.  225 

II. 

RELATING  TO  THE  LOVE  OP  GOD, 

Relating  to  the  idea  that  "God  is  love,"^  there  is  another 
contrast  between  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  world.  Not  one 
outside  the  Bible  represents  love  as  the  leading  moral  attri- 
bute of  the  Supreme  Being.  Hinduism  —  to  make  a  gen- 
eral statement  —  is  not  a  religion  of  love  but  of  fear ;  and 
the  anger  of  the-  gods  is  dreaded  at  every  step ;-  the  Krish- 
naic  doctrine  of  devotion  or  love  of  God  has,  however,  had 
an  immense  influence  on  modern  sects  in  India.^  Buddhism 
knows  nothing  of  God  as  a  Father  and  a  Friend. ■*  And 
nearly  one-fourth  of  mankind,  with  no  knowledge  of  Infinite 
Love,  are  little  affected  in  their  lives  by  the  semi-annual 
ceremonial  worship  of  Heaven  by  the  Emperor  of  China. ^ 

The  Koran  makes  the  impression  of  a  very  imperfect, 
fragmentary  Bible,  disproportionate,  as  if  one  were  to  select 
harsh  passages  in  the  Old  Testament  without  balancing 
them  by  the  voluminous  texts,  old  and  new,  that  express  the 
love  of  God.     Mr.  Stanley  Lane  Poole,  so  learned  in  all 

^I  John  4:  8,  16.  Ex.  19:  4.  Deut.  7:  8;  32:10,11.  Zept.  3:  17. 
Is.  63:  9.  John  3:  16;  16:  27.  Romans  5:  8.  Eph.  2:  4.  II 
Thess.  2:  16.     I  John  3:  1;     4:  9,  10,  19. 

^Bishop  Thoburn's  India  and  Malaysia,  p.  364.  This  is  in  accord 
with  all  authorities  upon  Hinduism. 

'Professor  E.  Washburn  Hopkins  in  personal  comment.  To 
the  text,  also.  Dr.  Hopkins  adds  this  Note: — "If  this  Krish- 
naic  doctrine  runs  to  erotic  mysticism,  so  did  Christian  love  in 
mediseval  saints.  Its  purest  form  is  without  eroticism,  as  it  is 
found  in  the  Bhagavad  Gita.  Hinduism  is  a  religion  of  love  to 
the  extent  that  in  the  Gfta  he  who  has  a  loving  devotion  to  God 
is  the  true  worshipper;  he  who  serves  by  rites  coming  lower  in 
the  scale." 

^Consult  Sir  Monier-Williams'  Buddhism,  p.  544. 

""I  have  been  reading  Chinese  books  for  more  than  forty  years, 
and  any  general  requirement  to  love  God,  or  the  mention  of  any 
one  as  loving  him,  has  yet  to  come  for  the  first  time  under  my 
eye." —  Professor  Legge. 

15 


226  THE  LOVE  OF  GOD. 

that  relates  to  Mussulman  literature,  says  that  while  there  is 
much  of  the  loving-kindness  of  God  in  the  Koran,  yet  this 
is  not  the  main  thought  in  Mahomet's  teaching;  that  the 
fear  rather  than  the  love  of  God  is  the  spur  of  Islam ;  that 
it  is  nearly  certain  that  the  love  of  God  is  an  idea  foreign 
to  most  of  the  races  that  have  accepted  Islam ;  that  the  dan- 
ger of  Islam  lies  in  the  stress  laid  on  the  power  of  God 
which  has  brought  about  the  stifling  effects  of  fatalism.^ 
^'It  practically  discourages  the  desire  for  a  direct  relation 
between  the  Deity  and  his  servant ;  it  draws  the  picture  of 
that  God  in  overharsh  outlines,  and  leaves  out  too  much  of 
the  tenderness  and  loving-kindness  of  the  God  of  Christ's 
teaching, —  and  hence  it  has  been  the  source  of  more  intol- 
erance and  fanatical  hatred  than  most  creeds.-  If  the  intol- 
erance of  the  worst  of  the  sons  of  Islam  is  based  upon  a 
misconception  of  the  Divine  character,  it  is  to  be  said  of  the 
best  that  they  are  more  enlightened  than  their  Book,  and 
that,  in  respect  to  this  point,  the  traditions  soften  the  asper- 
ity of  their  faith : — ' '  People  are  not  assembled  together  in 
Mosques  to  read  the  Book  of  God  without  light  and  comfort 
descending  upon  them ;  the  favor  of  God  covers  them,  angels 
encompass  them  around  about,  and  God  reckons  them 
among  His  angels."^ 

The  Babists  place  much  stress  upon  the  love  of  God  and 
love  to  God;  yet  the  sect  is  too  recent  and  too  limited  to 
make  much  figure  in  Islam, —  their  founder,  humble,  gen- 
tle, patient,  having  died  in  1850,  at  thirty  years  old.  His 
martyrdom,  and  that  of  Mirza  All  Muhammad  at  Shiraz, 

^Studies  in  a  Mosque,  pp.  89-91. 

"Ibid,  pp.  99,  100. 

"The  God  of  the  Arabian  prophet  is  not  a  God  of  love  who 
desires  that  his  children  should  become  one  with  him  and  should 
yield  him  their  affection.  He  is  a  God  of  will  and  power,  with- 
drawn from  the  human  world,  the  highest  relation  to  whom 
attainable  by  man,  is  expressed  in  the  well-known  name  the  reli- 
gion bears  —  'Islam,'  that  is,  resignation." — The  Faiths  of  the 
World,  St.  Giles  Lectures,  p.  400.  By  J.  Cameron  Lees,  D.  D. 
Edinburgh,  1882. 

^Cited  in  Professor  H.  P.  Smith's  Bible  and  Islam,  p.  26. 


THE  BABl'STS.  227 

show  how  bitterly  Islam  resented  the  new  doctrines  of  the 
Bab, — "the  Gate"  of  sacred  mysteries  and  spiritual  truths. 
The  Babis  voice  the  need  of  a  fuller  revelation  to  meet  the 
requirements  of  a  progressive  human  race;  being  averse  to 
various  archaic  beliefs  of  the  Moslems.  They  are  opposed 
to  the  use  of  the  sword  to  propagate  the  faith:  and  prefer 
to  be  killed  rather  than  kill.  Their  women  do  not  wear  the 
veil,  but  observe  an  Occidental  freedom.  It  is  recom- 
mended to  take  but  one  wife,  even  though  two  be  allowable. 
The  Babis  read  about  Christ,  and  seek  to  perfect  the  law  of 
Christ  by  their  own  superior  revelation.  They  know  more 
about  Christianity  than  other  Moslems,  and  entertain  a 
friendly  regard  for  Christians.^ 

In  its  relation  to  the  type  of  character  formed  by  habit- 
ually contemplating  the  love  of  the  everlasting  Father,^  and 
his  yearning  love  for  his  children,  it  is  not  certain  that,  as  a 
factor  in  moral  evolution,  the  Christian  type^  is  more  help- 
ful to  the  human  race*  than  the  negations  or  the  silence  or 
the  unpurposed  misrepresentations  of  the  All-Father  in  the 
non-Christian  books? 

The  sociological  influence  in  Europe  of  the  idea  of  the 
love  of  God  is  emphasized  by  Crozier  :^  the  essential  Roman 
idea  having  been  that  of  mastery  —  mastery  over  wife  and 
child  as  over  states, —  rnuch  as  the  gods  were  the  masters 
of  men ;  but  Christianity  introduced  the  principle  of  love  — 
love  toward  wife  and  child  and  towards  all  men,  as  God 
the  Father  has  loved  men. 

'Consult  E.  J.  Browne's  "Year  in  Persia"  and  his  translation  of 
"The  Episode  of  the  Bab." 

^Psalms  G8:  5;  103:  13.  Is.  63:  16.  Jer.  31:  9.  Matt.  5:  16; 
6:  1,  9,  32;     7:  11.     II  Cor.  1:  3.     Eph.  1:  3.     I  Peter  1:  3. 

^No  naturalistic  evolution  can  account  for  such  a  conception  as 
the  love  of  God. —  Toy's  Judaism  and  Christianity,  p.  84. 

*In  this,  the  divine  wisdom  wrought  a  greater  work  than  in 
creating  worlds,  by  being  the  teacher,  lover  and  saviour  of  the 
race. —  Curtiss'  Primitive  Semitic  Religion,  p.  246.  New  York, 
1902. 

^History  of  Intellectual  Development,  pp.  151-8.     London,  1897. 


228 


MORAL    LAW. 


III. 


EELATING  TO  THE  MORAL  LAW. 

As  a  further  contrast  between  the  non-Christian  and  the 
Christian  Sacred  Books  as  to  moral  thought,  it  is  notable 
that  the  Bible  does  not  leave  the  love  of  God  to  slumber  as 
an  inert  force,  but  sets  it  forth  in  the  basis  of  Moral  Law. 

If  Mohammed  had  a  glimpse^  of  the  all  pervading  prin- 
ciples of  the  Moral  Law,  were  they  so  put  forward  as  to 
make  love  to  God  and  man  the  touchstone  of  all  earthly 
values?  Is  not  the  -idea  of  universal  love  utterly  foreign 
to  the  Mussulman  mind?  Does  not  the  Koran  set  forth 
God's  providential  care  as  extending  to  Mohammedans 
only  ?- 

Brahmanism  knows  nothing  of  a  fundamental  law  of  lov- 
ing service  rendered  to  the  Supreme  God,^  or  of  love  as  a 
law  to  guide  the  conduct  of  every  man  of  every  caste  toward 
every  other  man  whatever  his  caste. 

Does  the  theoretical  and  practicable  amiability  of  Bud- 
dhism in  Southern  Asia  insist  upon  an  upreaching  love 
toward  the  Moral  Governor  of  men,  and  outreaching,  active 
benevolence  towards  mankind? 

'Bochari,  I,  p.  9,  may  refer  to  the  first  table  of  the  Moral  Law 
of  the  Gospels:  "None  of  you  believes  until  I  am  dearer  to  him 
than  his  father  and  his  child."  And  p.  8  refers  with  a  limitation 
to  the  second  table:  "None  of  you  believes,  until  he  loves  his 
brother  (of  Islam)  as  he  loves  himself."  Cited  in  Smith's  Bible 
and  Islam,  p.  224. 

"This  is  not  other  than  a  petrified  form  of  that  crude  Judaic 
thought  which  at  first  conceived  Jehovah  to  be  a  local  deity, 
paternally  pleading  by  the  earliest  prophets  for  justice  between 
Jewish  brethren. 

^The  exercise  of  an  emotional  love  to  Krishma  is,  however, 
taught: — Caitanya  (c.  A.  D.  1485)  saying  that  the  devotee  should 
feel  such  affection  as  is  felt  by  a  young  man  for  a  girl;  to  inspire 
this  mystic  devotion,  recourse  is  had  to  singing  and  dancing  for 
arousing  religious  fervor. —  Yicle  Hopkins'  Religions  of  India, 
p.  504. 


CONFUCIAN   THOUGHT.  229 

Shintoism  in  Japan  has  never  taught  moral  duty.  To 
observe  nature  worship  —  the  gods  and  goddesses  of  the 
mountains,  of  the  rivers,  of  the  ocean,  of  the  wind,  of 
fire,  of  food, —  and  the  worship  of  ancestors,  of  heroes,  of 
princes;  to  follow  one's  natural  impulses;  and  with  loyalty 
obey  the  mikado's  decrees: — this  is  the  Shinto  man's  chief 
end. 

Confucius  never  taught  that  one  should  love  God  with 
all  the  heart  and  mind  and  strength.  If  he  stated  the 
Golden  Kule  between  man  and  man  in  its  negative  form,  did 
he  give  to  it  prominence  as  a  law  to  regulate  the  conduct 
of  all  men?  Legge's  Chinese  Classics'^  gives  a  most  strik- 
ing statement  of  the  doctrine  of  Mih  Teih : — ' '  Suppose  that 
universal  mutual  love  prevailed  throughout  the  empire :  if 
men  loved  others  as  they  love  themselves,  .  .  .  one  state 
not  attacking  another,  and  one  family  not  throwing  another 
into  confusion ;  thieves  and  robbers  nowhere  existing ;  rulers 
and  ministers,  fathers  and  sons,  all  being  filial  and  kind ; — 
in  such  a  condition  the  empire  would  be  well  governed." 
This  being  urged  on  the  ground  of  expediency,  it  was 
thought  by  Mencius  to  be  impracticable,  and  it  has  never 
since  been  well  received  by  the  literati.^ 

The  Christian  Scriptures  make  the  Moral  Law^  the  sum- 
mary of  the  whole  duty  of  man,  the  royal  law,  the  ruling 
idea,  the  moral  dynamic  of  the  world : — 

"What  shall  I  do  to  ihherit  eternal  life?" 

"This  do,  and  thou  shalt  live : — 

I.  ' '  God  is  love :  the  Lord  loveth  you :  thou  shalt  love  the 
Lord  thy  God  with  all  thine  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul, 
and  with  all  thy  might : 

II.  "And  thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself.  He 
that  loveth  another  hath  fulfilled  the  law.  The  whole  law 
is  in  this  one  word :  all  things  whatsoever  ye  would  that 

^Vol.  II,  p.  105.     Hong  Kong,  1861. 

-Legge's  Classics,  II,  p.  120.  This  is,  however,  not  other  than 
the  course  pursued  in  Christendom  by  those  who  teach  that  the 
Golden  Rule  is  au  "iridescent  dream." 


230  MORAL   LAW. 

men  should  do  unto  you,  even  so  do  ye  also  unto  them, — 
this  is  the  law  and  the  prophets. '  '^ 

In  the  unfolding  Hebrew  self-consciousness  of  God 
expressed  in  their  literature,  the  prophetic  period  advanced 
the  idea  from  that  of  the  righteous  Jehovah  of  Israel  to  the 
God  of  human  history,  the  Moral  Governor  of  mankind. 
And  when  this  thought  began  to  get  a  grip  upon  the  nations 
through  the  zealous  proselyting  power  of  Judaism,  the  idea 
of  one  God, —  the  Creator,  the  Supreme  Spirit, —  was  wel- 
come to  the  most  thoughtful  minds  in  the  Roman  Empire.- 
The  proselytes  Avere,  however,  held  to  have  only  limited 
rights  in  Israel;  and  the  Gentile  world  gladly  received  the 
more  hospitable  preaching  of  the  Christian  apostles, — "Ye 
are  the  sons  and  daughters  of  the  Almighty."  And  the 
Moral  Law,  in  this  great  religious  movement,  was  received 
as  the  foundation  of  the  ncAv  faith: — 

God  is  love ;  love  God  supremely. 

Our  God  is  the  God  of  the  whole  human  race ;  all  men  are 
brethren:  therefore  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself. 

"So  act,  as  if  the  maxim  of  thy  action  were,  through 
thy  will,  to  become  a  universal  law.  "^ 

Is  not  this  Lloral  Law  the  true  fountain  of  the  altruistic 
life  in  all  the  Christian  centuries, —  made  illustrious  as  it 
was  by  the  life  and  dying  of  Jesus  the  Christ,  and  set  in  the 
forefront  of  the  world  as  the  prime  factor  in  social  evolu- 
tion, that  carries  in  itself  the  principles  for  renewing  man- 
kind? As  a  perfectly  unselfish  social  scheme,  what  can 
surpass  it,  and  for  individual  character  who  can  form  a 
superior  type?     Did  the  gods  of  Egypt,  Assyria,  Greece 

'The  Jewish  literature  is  iterant  and  insistent: — "What  thou 
wouldst  not,"  says  Hillel,  "do  not  to  thy  neighbor."  Compare 
such  texts  as  Luke  10:  25,  28.  I  John  4:  8.  Deut.  7:  8;  6:  5; 
11:1;  10:12.  Matt.  22:  37,  38,  39.  Luke  10:  27.  Lev.  19:  18,  34. 
James  2:  8.     Romans  13:  S,  9.     Gal.  5:  14.     Matt.  7:  12;      22:  40. 

Consult  also  Micah  6:  8.     Matt.  5:  44.     Rom.  12:  14,  20. 

For  love  as  the  universal  bond  of  discipleship,  vide  John  13: 
34,  35;     15:  12,  17.     I  Peter  1:  22.     I  John  3:  11,  23;     4:7,  11,  12. 

"Consult  Harnack's  Expansion  of  Christianity,  pp.  11,  12. 

'Immanuel  Kant. 


CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT.  231 

and  Rome  claim  the  love  of  their  worshippers?  Did  they 
dictate  a  law  of  universal  love  among  men?  Was  this 
double  law  —  one  law  of  love  in  two  tables,  love  to  God  and 
love  to  man  —  ever  put  forth,  as  a  solvent  of  the  problem 
of  evil,  by  the  Vedic  philosophers,  or  dreamed  of  by  Gau- 
tama? Did  it  enter  the  mind  of  the  astute  Confucius,  or 
Zoroaster  the  seer  ?  Was  it  made  the  foundation  of  a  moral 
kingdom  by  Mohammed?  This  was  the  thought  first  made 
known  to  the  w^orld  as  a  practical  power  —  a  moral  obliga- 
tion binding  upon  all  men  —  in  the  writings  of  the  Hebrew 
historians,  their  poets,  their  prophets  of  the  old  dispensa- 
tion, and  uttered  with  emphasis  by  the  Son  of  Man  and 
exemplified  in  His  life ;  it  was  this  which  the  Apostles  car- 
ried to  the  pagan  world, —  the  strange  story  of  the  Divine 
love  to  man  and  of  man's  answering  love,  and  the  idea  of 
an  unselfish  love  between  all  men  as  the  sons  of  God. 

IV. 

RELATING   TO    MORAL   EVIL. 

For  another  contrast  between  the  ethical  contents  of  the 
Christian  and  the  non-Christian  Books  there  is  a  world- 
wide difference  in  their  ideas  of  the  nature  of  sin, —  the  one 
relating  to  ritualistic  error  or  neglect,  and  the  other  to 
one's  moral  attitude  toward  God  and  man. 

Through  attention  to  priestly  guidance  in  forms  of  wor- 
ship, a  Hindu  need  not  be  pure  in  heart,  nor  truthful 
towards  one's  neighbor,  and  may  violate  nearly  every  pre- 
cept that  falls  under  the  Golden  Rule,^  and  yet  he  may  be 

^The  laws  of  Manu  forbid  Brahmans  to  drink  spirituous  liquor, 
to  kill  a  Brahman,  or  steal  gold  from  a  Brahman,  to  commit 
adultery  in  specified  relations,  or  to  associate  with  any  one  guilty 
of  such  crimes.—  Monier-Williams,  Hinduism,  p.  64.  It  should, 
however,  be  stated  that  the  theory  of  the  Hindu  Books  is  better 
than  the  practice  of  the  people, —  as  so  often  occurs  in  Christen- 
dom. The  Institutes  of  VisJmu  {Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  Vol. 
VII,  p.  13),  specify  among  the  duties  common  to  all  castes, — 
"Forbearance,  veracity,  restraint,  purity,  liberality,  self-control, 
not  to  kill,  obedience  towards  one's  teachers,  visiting  places  of 


232  RELATING  TO  MORAL  EVIL. 

upright  and  religious  in  the  Brahmanical  sense;  in  this 
Hinduism  appears  to  be  based  upon  very  ancient  beliefs  and 
customs,  in  which  the  ritual  is  the  whole  of  the  religion  and 
quite  independent  of  ethical  ideas.^  There  may  indeed  be 
moral  inspiration  in  observing  the  very  letter  of  the  ceremo- 
nial law,  yet  it  is  a  characteristic  of  primitive  society,  that 
the  religious  formula  should  be  commonly  quite  distinct 
from  ethical  thought ;-  the  union  of  ethics  and  religion  indi- 
cating an  advanced  type  —  as  in  Judaism  and  Christianity 
the  ethical  ideas  are  not  only  distinctly  religious  but  the 
outcome  of  religious  thought  developed  under  ethical  influ- 
ence,^—  Christianity,  however,  illustrating  the  relative 
immaturity  of  its  development  by  frequently  divorcing 
ethics  and  religion.*     Among  the  Hindus,  says  Bishop  Tho- 

pllgrimage,   sympathy    with     the    aflQicted,    straightforwardness, 
freedom  from  covetousness,  reverence  towards  the  gods  and  the 
Brahmans,  and  freedom  from  anger." 
'Compare  Chapter  "V,  pp.  168,  169,  supra. 

Annotation  by  E.  Washbubn  Hopkins,  LL.  D.: — "It  is  true 
that  ceremony  is  more  than  moral  purity,  yet  it  should  not  be 
overlooked  that  —  although  in  practice  the  ceremony  is  and 
always  was  the  one  thing  needful  —  the  early  lawgivers 
expressly  state  that  a  pure  heart  is  more  important  than  litur- 
gical observance.  Practically,  the  statements  in  the  text  are 
quite  correct;  theoretically,  the  Hindu  was  not  so  blind  that  he 
did  not  see  —  at  least  at  times  and  perhaps  under  Buddha's 
influence  —  that  purity  is  purity  of  heart,  not  of  ceremony. 
Many  mediseval  sects  such  as  the  Siddhas  or  Saints  were  founded 
on  this  idea  that  rites  are  ineffective  and  a  pure  life  the  one  all 
important  thing." 

So  true  is  it  that  the  Hindu  mind,  so  profoundly  religious,  has, 
in  many  particulars,  from  time  to  time,  caught  glimpses  of  the 
highest  truths,  which  some  devotees  have  sought  to  express  in 
the  life. 

^In  the  early  Semitic  conception,  the  term  holy  had  no  ethical 
significance. —  W.  Robertson  Smith's  Religion  of  the  Semites,  p.  90. 

Wide  .Tastrow's  Study  of  Religion,  p.  220;  compare  also  pp. 
211,  224. 

*See  Professor  Toy's  Judaism  and  Cliristianity ,  p.  18.  The  Toy 
list  might  have  been  almost  indefinitely  extended,  if  a  detailed 
statement  were  required. 


HINDU  THOUGHT.  233 

burn,  falsehood,  impurity  and  dishonesty  are  not  sins;  but 
it  is  a  sin  to  omit  some  rite,  neglect  a  gift  to  a  temple  or 
priest,  or  break  an  old  custom.  The  gods  are  thrown  into 
the  shade,  and  the  rites  have  become  the  great  divinities, 
says  Mitchell;  the  moral  character  of  the  worshiper  is  of 
no  consequence,  if  the  sacred  texts  of  the  Brahmana  are 
rightly  uttered  by  the  priest  and  the  ceremony  duly  per- 
formed the  incantation  is  complete  ;^  religion  is  transformed 
into  magic:  the  ordinary  Hindu,  seeing  the  distinction 
between  right  and  wrong,  is  not  told  to  do  the  right  and  shun 
the  wrong,  that  he  should  worship  God  and  not  injure  his 
neighbor,  but  he  is  perplexed  and  confused  by  ceremonial 
duties;  for  ages  past,  the  most  heinous  sins  could  be  com- 
mited,  without  injury  to  a  man's  position  in  society,  but 
excommunication  has  followed  the  violation  of  caste  rules.^ 
Thomas  Twining 's  Travels  in  India,  a  hundred  years  ago, 
depicted  the  most  revolting,  cruel,  indecent  aspects  of 
Hindu  worship,  and  sacrifice  of  human  life  —  the  children 
at  Sangar  Island,  the  aged  women  at  Allahabad,  crushings 
by  idol  cars,  burnings  alive, —  as  the  outcome  of  the  undis- 
turbed reign  of  ages  of  Hinduism.  During  all  these  grim 
generations  the  people  were  religious  and  this  was  their 
religion.^  Ward,  one  of  the  earliest  of  the  European  com- 
mentators on  Hindu  manners,  says  that  as  a  whole  the  people 
were  lascivious,  covetous,  and  perpetually  deceitful. 

'A  historical  parallel  would  be  that  of  Christian  adherents 
finding  the  essence  of  acceptable  sanctity  in  a  certain  key  for 
intonation  and  an  exact  ritual. 

Professor  Lanman,  so  felicitous  in  phrasing,  speaks  of  the  sac- 
rifice itself  as  apotheosized  and  invested  with  supernal  power. — 
The  World's  Religions,  p.  89. 

^J.  Murray  Mitchell's  Hinduism,  noting  in  this  order  of  pages, — 
41,  204-5,  209,  180,  85. 

Vide  also  citations  in  note  upon  p.  169,  Chapter  V,  supra. 

Hf  any  one,  however,  is  to  stone  the  Brahmans  for  this,  it  will 
not  be  a  Christian  well-versed  in  the  story  of  persecutions  ia 
Christendom  by  zealots  who  divorced  religion  from  ethics. 

^Writings,  etc.,  of  the  Hindus,  Vol.  I,  p.  100;  IV,  311-3. 


234  RELATING  TO  MORAL  EVIL. 

Sir  William  Jones  said  he  never  knew  a  Hindu  who  would 
not  perjure  himself:  courts  of  justice  abounded  in  "four 
annas  men, ' '  ready  to  swear  to  whatever  might  be  required 
to  win  a  case.  Said  Dr.  John  Scudder,  a  resident  in 
1819-1853,  "I  never  saw  a  man  in  India  whose  word  I 
would  be  willing  to  trust."  The  Duke  of  Wellington,  in 
the  supplemental  despatches  1797-1805,  said  in  his  utter 
despair  of  the  Hindus,  that  they  vv'ere  without  one  redeem- 
ing quality.  If  this  pertained  to  that  period  when  the 
natives  were  restive  under  new  rule,  certainly  the  state- 
ment would  not  be  made  now  by  officers  of  the  British 
crown.  The  impression,  however,  made  at  this  day  upon 
thoughtful  and  sympathetic  strangers,  is  unfavorable:  Mr. 
Moncure  Conway,  after  years  of  the  appreciative  study  of 
Oriental  faiths,  stating,  upon  his  disillusioning  visit  to 
India,  that  Occidental  peoples  have  no  conception  of  the 
degradation  of  Hindu  society.  And  it  is  stated  by  Sir  Monier 
Williams,  who  studied  Hinduism  for  forty  years,  that ' '  The 
present  characteristics  of  Brahmanism  are  poverty,  igno- 
rance and  superstition.  Whatever  profound  thought  lay 
about  the  roots  of  Hinduism,  it  held  and  still  holds  the  two 
hundred  and  eighty  millions  of  India  in  the  bondage  of 
degradation,  cruelty  and  immorality. ' '  Yet  the  Hindus  are 
a  most  religious  people,  faithfully  observing  the  rites  due, 
through  immemorial  ages  of  domestic  custom  and  of  Brah- 
manical  instruction :  nor  can  they  technically  be  called  sin- 
ners, save  through  the  neglect  of  due  ceremonial  observance. 
Nor  is  it  possible  that  there  should  ever  be  a  public  opinion 
interpenetrated  by  the  principles  of  the  Golden  Rule  among 
men  until  the  essential  nature  of  moral  evil  is  more  per- 
fectly understood  by  the  Hindus.  The  Secretary  of  State 
and  Council  of  India  have  expressed  the  great  obligation 
of  the  government  of  India  to  the  missionaries,  who  "have 
given  to  the  people  at  large  new  ideas,  not  only  on  purely 
religious  questions,  but  on  the  nature  of  evil,  the  obligations 
of  law,  and  the  motives  by  which  human  conduct  should  be 
regulated;  through  which  insensibly  a  higher  standard  of 


BUDDHIST  THOUGHT,  235 

moral  conduct  is  becoming  familiar  to  the  young,  preparing 
them  to  be  in  every  way  better  men  and  better  citizens  of 
the  great  empire  in  which  they  dwell.  "^ 

In  Buddhism,  the  monks  or  mendicants  are  held  to  certain 
wholesome  moralities  —  to  abstain  from  taking  life,  theft, 
adultery,  lying,  slander,  vain  conversation,  coveting  and 
malice, — ^the  observance  of  which  is  related  to  that  per- 
fected moral  state  which  they  seek ;  the  violation  subjecting 
them  to  discipline.-  Aside  from  this,  there  is  no  prescribed 
moral  attitude  toward  men;  and,  for  God,  there  is  no  per- 
sonal Supreme  Will  for  guidance.  The  theory  of  Bud- 
dhism, moreover,  denies  the  continued  existence  of  the 
human  soul  after  death,  and  so  denies,  as  we  should  say,  all 
personal  responsibility;  one's  moral  merit  or  demerit  pass- 
ing on,  at  death,  to  another  individual  entity  in  the  cycles 
of  transmigration, —  this  being  now  held  —  through  an  illu- 
sive Buddhist  mystery  —  to  represent  a  quasi  identity  from 
one  generation  to  another.  Of  many  schools  of  Buddhists, 
if  some  inculcate  observances  for  the  laity,  supposed  to  be 
of  merit  in  relation  to  their  next  birth  in  a  series  of  trans- 
migrations, these  relate  to  the  support  of  the  mendicants, 
temple  building  or  adorning,  and  festivals,  rather  than  to 
moral  character.  Rites  and  ceremonies  were  denounced  by 
Gautama,  who  designated  such  moralities  as  have  been 
alluded  to  as  the  standard  for  all  disciples.^     Among  the 

^Report  on  the  Condition  of  India,  ordered  to  be  printed  by  the 
House  of  Commons,  April  28,  1873,—  p.  129. 

-That  this  is  so  to  this  day,  vide  Warren's  BuddMsm ;  Vol.  Ill, 
of  the  Harvard  Oriental  Series. 

^The  liturgy  now  used  in  the  South  of  China  is  thought  by  Beal 
to  be  due  to  early  Christian  missionaries,  introduced  about  A.  D. 
1412  {Yide  Catena  of  Buddhist  Scriptures  from  the  Chinese.  Lon- 
don, 1871.): — "We  by  reason  of  grievous  sins,  have  lived  in 
ignorance  of  all  the  Buddhas,  and  of  any  way  of  escape  from  the 
consequences  of  our  conduct.  We  have  strengthened  the  power 
of  the  three  sources  of  sin,  and  added  sin  to  sin;  a  wicked  heart 
has  reigned  within.  Filled  with  fear  and  shame  and  great  heart- 
chiding,  we  repent,  and  would  separate  ourselves  from  evil.  Oh, 
would  that  the  merciful  Kwan-yin  would  receive  our  vows  of 
amendment!" 


236  RELATING  TO  MORAL  EVIL. 

Buddhists  of  North  China,  says  Dr.  James  Gilmour,  rites 
are  prescribed,  which  have,  however,  no  relation  to  moral 
conduct:  and  the  moral  perception  of  the  people  is  so 
blighted  that  they  follow  the  lamas  implicitly  in  things  reli- 
gious, although  they  know  them  to  be  intensely  worldly,  dis- 
honest, and  guilty  of  unblushing  wickedness.^ 

Among  the  Confucianists  in  China,  the  common  people 
have  no  ceremonies  relating  to  the  worship  of  Heaven ;  and 
so  far  as  there  is  any  religious  system  whatever,  as  distin- 
guished from  a  moral  and  civic  philosophy,  its  only  stand- 
ard of  uprightness  consists  in  observing  rites  in  ancestral 
worship. 

In  Islam,  aside  from  blasphemy,  sin  consists  in  disobe- 
dience to  the  commands  of  God  as  they  appear  in  the  Koran ; 
acts  are  not  inherently  right  or  wrong,  their  quality  depends 
on  the  commandments.-  These  chiefly  relate  to  daily 
prayers,  alms,  ablution,  keeping  the  great  fast,  and  the 
pilgrimage  to  Mecca  once  in  a  lifetime, —  and  such  mandates 
as  pertain  to  civic  condition,  enforced  by  the  state.  So  sin 
is  related  to  an  external  form,  rather  than  an  internal  moral 
state. 

In  the  Greek  and  Roman  religion  there  were  no  positive 
moral  precepts;  it  was  not  different  from  a  natural  reli- 
gion. The  only  immorality  known  was  that  of  neglecting 
certain  religious  rites  or  violating  civil  law.^*  Nowhere  is 
sin  spoken  of  so  little  as  in  Greek  and  Roman  literature, 
and  in  no  books  in  the  world  is  so  much  said  about  sin  as  in 

^Among  the  Mongols,  pp.  152,  153.     London,  1883. 

^'NoTE  BY  Professor  Duncan  B.  Macdonald. —  This  can  be  put 
more  absolutely.  Sin  depends  upon  the  will  of  God;  it  is  not  an 
entity  by  itself,  knowable  by  man  through  his  nature  as  such. 
This  is  the  formal  dogmatic  doctrine. 

Compare  this  with  the  Bablst  doctrine  that  there  is  no  abso- 
lute good,  no  absolute  truth;  that  good  is  what  God  ordains,  and 
truth  is  what  God  reveals.— Browne's  Year  Among  the  Persians, 
p.  406. 

^It  was  the  judgment  of  De  Quincy,  that  the  Greeks  and 
Romans  had  not  the  faintest  vestige  of  an  idea  of  what  in  Scrip- 
tures is  called  sin. 


CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT.  237 

Hebrew  literature.  So  clearly  was  this  made  manifest  in 
the  early  centuries  that  Christianity  was  ridiculed  as  the 
poor-sin  religion.^ 

The  Christian  theory  in  respect  to  moral  wrong:  relates 
solely  to  the  attitude  of  a  man  or  a  nation  toward  the  Moral 
Law  of  perfect  love  to  God  and  an  unselfish  love  to  man; 
he  is  a  sinner  who  merely  neglects  to  love  God  supremely, 
and  neglects  to  observe  the  Golden  Rule  of  conduct  toward 
his  fellow-man.  He  is  living  at  odds  with  the  universe  who 
thinks  to  live  outside  the  law  of  love  —  that  eternal  law  of 
moral  rectitude  which  demands  that  every  thought  and 
word  and  deed  of  every  human  being  should  be  such  as  to 
harmonize  not  only  with  the  Holy  Will  of  the  Infinite,  but 
with  the  well-being  of  every  finite  personality  in  all  worlds. 
And  in  respect  to  every  man's  attitude  toward  Jesus  Christ 
whose  life  was  the  embodiment  of  the  Moral  Law,  Christian- 
ity represents  the  Son  of  Man  as  so  related  to  every  human 
being  that  no  one  can  become  acquainted  with  him  and  be  in 
the  same  mental  posture  as  before ;  the  man  is  straightway 
for  or  against  him  whose  moral  character  is  the  universal 
touchstone,  discovering  to  every  man  what  manner  of  man 
he  is.  There  is  nothing  so  characteristic  of  the  Christian 
Scriptures  as  the  view  that  is  always  taken  of  sin  as  the 
transgression  of  the  Moral  Law  of  love.  "The  Church," 
says  Cardinal  Newman,  "regards  this  world  and  all  that  is 
in  it  as  a  mere  shade,  as  dust  and  ashes,  compared  with  the 
value  of  one  single  soul;  she  holds  that  it  were  far  better 
for  sun  and  moon  to  drop  from  heaven,  for  the  earth  to 
fail,  and  for  all  the  many  millions  who  are  in  it  to  die  of 
starvation  in  extremest  agony,  as  far  as  temporal  affliction 
goes,  than  that  one  soul,  I  will  not  say  should  be  lost,  but 
should  commit  one  single  venial  sin."-  The  heinous  char- 
acter of  sin  consists  in  its  violation  of  the  basal  law  of  exist- 
ence: the  neglect  of  loyalty  to  God  —  the  supreme  choice 

'Ackerman's  Christian  Elements  in  Plato,  p.  57.  Edinburgh, 
1861. 

-Difflculties  Felt  by  Anglicans  in  Catholic  Teaching,  p.  210. 
Fourth  edition.     London. 


238  ERADICATING    MORAL    EVIL. 

of  something  else  than  God  —  tending  to  overturn  his 
moral  government;  and  that  selfish  non-observance  of  the 
Golden  Kiile,  which  so  far  tends  to  destroy  society  as  to 
make  the  Kingdom  of  Love  impossible. 

Is  it  not  clear,  that  in  its  relation  to  the  fashioning  of 
human  character  all  over  the  world,  the  Christian  idea  of 
the  nature  of  sin,  as  contrasted  with  the  non-Christian, 
must  create  a  superior  type  of  citizens,  more  capable  of 
organizing  and  supporting  good  government?  If  sin  is 
the  omission  of  rites  prescribed  by  a  priestly  caste, — ^by 
Brahmans,  by  mendicants,  by  Shinto  or  Taoist  priests,  by 
ancient  sages,  by  domestic  progenitors  or  national  heroes, 
by  the  word  of  Islam,  by  medicine  men  or  witch  doctors, — 
whatever  be  the  mode,  if  sin  is  related  to  ceremonial  observ- 
ance, the  worshiper  fancies  himself  able  to  earn  at  some 
future  time  or  in  some  future  life,  whenever  it  is  convenient 
to  him,  his  final  acceptance  with  God,  with  Karma,  with 
spirits  of  the  air,  through  accumulating  merits  by  the 
observance  of  rites  enough  to  offset  all  old  scores  of  neglect, 
—  and  meantime  in  his  moral  relations  he  may  be  a  bad 
neighbor,  and  as  bad  a  citizen  as  he  can  be  and  keep  out  of 
the  clutches  of  the  law:  but  if  sin  is  the  violation  of  that 
Moral  Law  of  Love  which  is  fit  for  the  guidance  of  the 
entire  moral  universe, —  then  man  as  a  sinner,  were  his  sel- 
fishness fully  developed,  would  be  a  traitor  toward  heaven 
and  an  anarchist  toward  earth,  and  this  man  must  volunta- 
rily and  radically  change  his  moral  purpose  or  it  will  be  ill 
with  the  world.  To  recognize  clearly  the  essential  nature 
of  evil,  and  to  cultivate  a  keen  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  is 
fundamental  in  all  moral  evolution  and  the  development  of 
human  society. 


NON-CHRISTIAN    VIEWS    UPON    ERADICATING    MORAL    EVIL. 

The  scheme  for  getting  rid  of  sin  offers  another  contrast 
in  theory  and  practice,  between  non-Christian  and  Chris- 


HINDU  THOUGHT.  239 

tians,  in  life,  and  in  their  Sacred  Books.     The  fundamental 
Hindu  position  is  this  ■} 

Since  all  that  appears  to  be  is  essentially  God,  there  can 
be  but  one,  and  this  one  cannot  be  a  personal  being.  No 
Hindu  word,  nor  any  from  the  Sanskrit-derived  languages 
of  India,  would  convey  to  any  native  the  western  idea  of 
personality;  "vyakti"  is  used,  but  the  masses  do  not  know 
it,  and  to  the  learned  it  has  to  be  explained  that  a  meaning 
is  put  into  it  which  it  has  not  to  their  minds.  As  the  One 
is  not  personal,  he  has  no  will  to  serve  as  a  standard  of 
right;  if  there  is  such  a  standard,  it  must  be  found  in  man. 
The  English  word  "ought"  cannot  be  translated  into 
Hindu.  The  word  popularly  used  means  "the  desirable." 
Neither  is  there  in  Hindu  any  word  to  represent  "con- 
science." The  late  Dr.  Wenger,  translator  of  the  Sanskrit 
Bible,  asked  his  Brahman  pundit  for  a  word  by  which  to 
render  "conscience,"  explaining  to  him  its  meaning. 
"Sir,"  was  his  reply,  "when  a  people  have  not  the  thing, 
how  is  it  possible  that  they  should  have  any  word  for  the 
thing?"-  To  these  conceptions  must  be  added  the  concept 
of  Maya  or  "illusion,"  by  which  is  universally  meant  that 
in  virtue  of  which  one  thinks  of  this  world  with  all  his  expe- 
riences in  it  as  having  no  substantial  objective  reality  apart 
from  God.  Maya  affirms  the  untrustworthiness  of  the  tes- 
timony of  consciousness  as  to  one's  self  and  the  world, 
implying  that  if  ever  consciousness  seems  to  suggest  a 
moral  law,  this  too  is  due  to  Maya,  and  one  may,  if  he 

^The  following  paragraph  is  the  embodiment  of  a  communica- 
tion received  by  the  Author  from  the  late  S.  H.  Kellogg,  LL.  D., 
of  Allahabad. 

='Yet  Manu  (8:  84,  Miller's  translation)  speaks  of  the  spirit  in 
the  human  breast  which  seems  the  action  of  the  wrongdoer. 

Note  by  Professor  E.  Washburx  Hopkins. —  Be  it  said,  also, 
that  the  "man  within"  is  a  good  equivalent  for  "conscience." 
Even  if  no  one  sees,  says  the  Hindu  judge,  remember  that  the 
"man  within"  sees  the  crime.  It  is  the  spirit  pure  and  untram- 
meled  by  earth  that  is  meant. 


240  ERADICATING  MORAL   EVTL, 

chooses,  treat  it  as  an  illusion.^  This  results  in  universal 
untrustworthiness  in  society ;  there  being  no  such  thing  as 
Hindu  public  confidence.  The  people  do  not  believe  in 
each  other.  This  is  illustrated  by  the  rates  of  interest, — 
from  twenty  to  twenty-four  per  cent,  or  more :  and  rather 
than  lend  money  at  this  rate  to  natives,  the  moneyed  classes 
in  the  Punjab  prefer  to  take  three  and  a  half  per  cent,  from 
the  Indian  government, —  this  being  the  relative  estimate 
by  Hindu  gentlemen  between  native  and  British  probity. 

If,  moreover,  continues  Dr.  Kellogg 's  letter,  all  that  I 
am,  all  that  I  shall  ever  experience  is  absolutely  and  irre- 
vocably predetermined  by  an  unconscious  Being  eternally 
evolving  through  the  power  of  Maya  the  appearance  of  a 
world  and  the  being  in  it ;  if  there  is,  as  even  the  most  igno- 
rant villagers  have  often  stoutly  argued,  the  same  kind  of 
necessary  connection  between  my  position  in  life,  my  acts, 
and  experiences,  and  previous  acts  and  experiences  in  pre- 

'Vedantism  is  the  most  widely  prevailing  system  of  Hindu 
philosophy;  teaching  that  there  is  no  material  world  save  in 
appearance,  that  an  eternal  illusion  projects  itself,  that  right  and 
wrong  are  mere  semblances.  A  murder  committed  by  a  sage  is 
an  illusion.  So  subtle,  not  to  say  evasive,  is  the  Hindu  mind 
that  a  philosophic  distinction  is  made  by  the  Sankhya  teaching 
between  eight  kinds  of  illusion,  and  ten  kinds  of  extreme  illu- 
sion.—  Consult  Mitchell's  Hinduism  in  this  order  of  pages, —  207, 
208,  51,  58  note. 

This  is  based  on  the  idea  of  God  as  the  impersonal  Arranger- 
or  Arrangement  of  the  universe. 

The  Hindu  conception  of  the  Universal  soul  appears  to  be  that 
of  a  vague  diffused  essence  pervading  nature,  without  thought,, 
emotion,  will,  self-consciousness,  or  other  quality  except  extension 
and  life. —  Compare  Crozier's  History  of  Intellectual  Develop- 
ment, I,  85,  86. 

If,  therefore,  the  human  soul  is  made  an  object  of  philosophical 
thought,  it  is  conceived  of  as  having  a  spiritual  side  and  a  mate- 
rial side,  and  in  philosophizing  it  is  possible  either  to  think  of 
the  material  side  of  the  soul  as  illusion,  or  of  the  spiritual  as 
unreal.  To  the  introspective  Hindu  mind,  therefore,  the  sub- 
stantive value  of  the  soul  i.s  its  use  to  philosophize  upon;  as,  to  a 
normal  English  engineer,  it  is  said  that  the  chief  use  of  the-, 
rivers  is  to  feed  the  canals. 


HINDU  THOUGHT,  241 

vious  births,  that  there  is  between  the  seed  of  a  given  tree 
and  the  fruit  which  it  shall  produce,  then  what  is  the  use  of 
doing  anything  to  better  my  condition,  or  of  trying  to  have 
my  children  rise  in  the  world?  Whatever  I  may  do,  will 
not  affect  the  issue.  This  is  what,  over  and  over  again,  is 
heard  from  high  and  low.  This  pantheistic  fatalism  is  one 
cause  of  the  Hindu  lack  of  that  push  and  enterprise  which 
is  so  characteristic  of  Christian  nations,  and  the  absence  of 
which  in  India  is  one  of  the  most  impressive  contrasts 
between  the  Orient  and  the  Occident.  To  judge  from 
repeated  conversations  on  this  matter  with  all  classes,  this 
is  what  they  themselves  universally  bring  up  as  a  sound 
justification  for  the  apathetic  acceptance  and  endurance  of 
every  variety  of  social  and  moral  evil. 

Dr.  R.  A.  Hume,  a  native  of  India  and  for  some  thirty- 
five  years  a  philanthropic  worker  in  the  country,^  says  the 
same  thing  as  to  the  moral  relations  of  any  individual :  ' '  To 
the  popular  mind  in  Hindustan,  sin  is  a  matter  of  fate,  or, 
more  properly,  the  result  of  guilt  incurred  in  some  previous 
life  of  the  culprit."-  As  to  the  ultimate  cause  of  moral 
error  in  this  life,  it  runs  back  to  lives  antecedent:  and  no 
escape  from  it  can  be  looked  for  save  in  lives  subsequent. 
Holding  to  no  personal  God,  there  is  no  firm  sense  of  one's 
own  personality. 

If  Hinduism  speaks  of  Maya  as  illusion,  Buddhism 
speaks  of  Karma,  as  impersonal  law  of  moral  retribution, — 
the  work  done  in  this  or  in  a  former  life  —  or  the  character 
which  is  the  sequence  of  former  moral  action  —  that  must 
go  on  producing  effects,^  a  law  of  the  entire  universe  with- 

*By  Queen  Victoria,  Dr.  Hume  was  presented  with  the  Kaiser- 
i-Hing  gold  medal  for  public  service  in  India. 

="The  results  of  one's  works  in  a  former  existence  are  no  more 
to  be  stayed  than  the  waves  of  a  mighty  river." —  From  the  Upan- 
ishads,  cited  in  Lanman's  Beginnings  of  Hindu  Pantlieinm,  p.  17. 
Cambridge,  1890. 

^Max  Miiller,  Natural  Religion,  p.  112.  Professor  Rhys  Davids 
calls  it  the  moral  power  working  in  the  universe,  p.  150,  Bud- 
16 


242  ERADICATING   MORAL  EVIL. 

out  a  personal  lawgiver  behind  it  which  inflicts  trouble  for 
sins  committed  in  previous  lives,  and  from  which  there  is  no 
escape: — "I  am  what  I  am,  because  I  was  what  I  was; 
I  was  what  I  was,  because  I  had  been  what  I  had  been ;  and 
I  had  been  what  I  had  been,  because  before  that  I  had  been 
something  else, —  and  so  I  do  what  I  do  because  I  am  in  the 
inexorable  grasp. "  This  is  Karma  in  the  popular  view,  but 
it  is  a  mystery  beyond  the  reach  of  reason.  Strickly  speak- 
ing, Buddhist  scholarship  affirms  that  there  is  certainly  not 
a  continuous  life  of  the  same  sentient  being:  the  man 
dies,  there  is  no  immortal  soul,  no  rebirth,  but  his  good  or 
evil  doing,  his  Karma,  does  not  die,  the  effect  of  his  doing, 
desert  or  merit,  is  concentrated  in  that  new  sentient  being 
that  is  produced  in  his  stead  at  the  instant  of  his  death, — 
a  new  sentient  being  as  to  its  part  and  powers  but  myste- 
riously as  if  the  same  in  respect  to  its  heritage  of  essential 
doing:  its  nature,  its  locality,  its  future,  being  determined 
iby  the  Karma  of  its  antecedent  sentient  being.^ 

In  this  view,  the  only  possible  liberation  from  an  evil 
Karma  is  through  merits  accumulated  in  a  cycle  of  lives 
w^hich  will  ever  be  in  higher  and  higher  forms  if  release  is 
to  be  finally  won. 

The  doctrine  of  transmigration,  in  India,  originating  with 
the  Brahmans,  was  —  with  a  difference  —  caught  up  and 
stoutly  maintained  by  Gautama,  Buddha  the  Enlightened 
One;  the  Brahmans  maintained  that  it  w^as  the  same  soul 
traversing  the  seas  of  sorrow  in  rebirths  age  after  age ;  the 
Buddhists  that  it  was  the  same  Karma,  or  work  done  in  the 
former  life,  possessing  a  different  sentient  being  at  each 
new  birth.-     In  its  practical  Avorking,  one  life  is  said  to 

dhism.  The  total  moral  action  of  an  individual  during  his  life- 
time constitutes  the  Karma  which  he  transmits  to  his  successor. 

'Earth's  Religions  of  India,  p.  112.  David's  Buddhism,  pp.  101, 
103,  104,  106.  Warren's  Buddhism;  Vol  III,  of  the  Harvard  Ori- 
ental Series,  pp.  210,  211. 

'Bishop  Titcomb,  Buddhism,  pp.  48,  49,  says  that  Karma  traus- 
raits  "an  identity  of  moral  being,  vi^ithout  identity  of  personal 


BUDDHIST  THOUGHT,  243 

be  related  to  former  and  to  future  lives,  as  one  flame  is 
related  to  another  flame  antecedent  or  subsequent, —  the 
blowing  out  of  one  flame  and  the  kindling  of  the  next  being 
separated,  not  by  appreciable  time,  but  by  the  order  of 
nature.  Not  literally,  but  by  accommodation,  it  is  said  that 
the  flame  of  a  relighted  lamp  is  related  to  a  flame  that  has 
been  extinguished. 

]\Ir.  Spenee  Ilardy^  once  asked  a  native  pundit  to  search 
the  Buddhist  books  and  report  to  him  the  states  of  existence 
which  Gautama  went  through  before  reaching  the  perfected 
life.  He  made  a  catalogue  of  six  hundred  and  six  states, 
including  the  state  of  a  serpent,  a  frog,  a  jungle  fowl,  a  pea- 
cock, a  water  fowl,  a  rat,  a  dog,  a  pig,  a  horse,  a  lion  ten 
times,  a  golden  eagle,  an  ape  eighteen  times,  a  gambler,  a 
thief,  a  nobleman  twenty-three  times,  a  monarch  fifty-eight 
times,  an  ascetic  eighty-three  times.  Gautama  once  pointed 
to  a  broom  in  a  corner,  which,  he  said,  had  been  in  a  former 
birth  a  novice  in  a  monastery  who  had  neglected  to  be  dili- 
gent in  sweeping.- 

During  more  than  a  hundred  generations  of  men,  transmi- 
gration of  the  soul,  or  of  the  Karma,  has  been  taught  in  the 
Orient  by  Brahmans  and  Buddhists;  and  it  is  still  taught 
and  ever  kept  uppermost  in  the  popular  mind, —  the  one 
thing  religious  that  is  vividly  apprehended ;  with  such  moral 

being."  If  it  is  difficult  for  the  "Western  mind  to  understand 
how  this  can  be,  it  is  to  be  said  that  to  the  evasive  Hindu  intel- 
lect, familiar  with  metaphysical  subtleties,  it  presents  no  greater 
difficulty  than  certain  Christian  tenets  that  are  confessedly  mys- 
teries. To  the  Buddhist,  it  is  the  way  the  universe  is  made.  And 
the  Hindu  mind  easily  holds  (according  to  Mitchell,  Hinduism, 
p.  55),  or  believes  itself  to  hold,  at  the  same  time,  two  or  more 
opinions  which  appear  wholly  irreconcilable. 

^Manual  of  Buddhism,  p.  102.     London,  1853. 

^'It  is,  however,  to  be  noted  that,  while  the  authenticity  of  cer- 
tain early  Buddhist  books  was  settled  earlier  than  the  Christian 
era,  many  traditions  have  been  embodied  in  later  literature  upon 
which  criticism  may  throw  some  doubt  as  to  what  Gautama 
really  said. 


244  ERADICATING  MORAL  EVIL. 

motive  power  as  there  may  be  in  it.^  Does  not  this  concept 
of  human  life,  constantly  interchangeable  between  inani- 
mate things,  men,  beasts,  or  demons,  diminish  greatly  the 
possible  power  of  manhood  in  that  third  of  the  human  race 
holding  it  ?  Will  not  that  remain  as  now  an  inferior  racial 
stock  which  is  perpetually  haunted  with  the  notion  of  man 's 
reappearing  again  and  again  upon  earth  as  a  ghost  or  in 
animal  form  or  as  a  thing  devoid  of  manly  consciousness? 
Is  not  this  idea  a  relic  of  a  primitive  age,  having  much  in 
common  with  the  folk-lore  stories  of  every  land,  a  survival 
of  ideas  left  behind  some  generations  but  not  some  ages  ago 
by  those  peoples  which  have  made  the  most  intellectual  prog- 
ress? And  in  its  relation  to  moral  life,  in  its  effect  upon 
society,  is  it  not  fatal  to  any  sharp  sense  of  individual 
present  responsibility  for  wrongdoing;^  and  fatal  to  any 
sense  of  urgency  about  repenting,  or  turning  to  obey  the 
Moral  Law  ?  Is  it  not  the  old  story,  repeated  for  five  or  six 
scores  of  generations  — ' '  I  am  what  I  am,  not  on  account  of 
what  I  have  done  here  and  now ;  and  pain  and  penalties  or 
rewards  will  not  visit  me  here  and  now?"  And  is  it  not, 
for  the  conscientious,  a  theory  of  despair,  a  pessimistic 
scheme,  which  insists  upon  millions  of  successive  lives,^ 
during  which  moral  retribution,  or  Karma,  acts  on,  from 

^The  Buddhist  candidate  for  perfection  must  avoid  all  sins  that, 
through  the  law  of  Karma,  may  cause  him  to  be  born  as  a  woman 
in  his  next  transmigration;  and  if  indeed  he  is  to  become  per- 
fected, in  future  ages  uot  too  far  distant,  he  will  never,  it  is 
affirmed,  be  born  as  any  kind  of  vermin,  or  in  a  lower  life  than 
that  of  a  snipe  (Spence  Hardy).  That  this  doctrine  may  be 
used  as  a  motive  appears  in  the  Jesuit  relation  of  one  wno  was 
baptized,  that  he  might  rid  himself  of  the  royal  post-horse  des- 
tiny, which  the  Chinese  Buddhist  mendicants  had  assigned  to 
him  in  his  next  life,  with  sundry  exhortations  to  travel  well  and 
not  stumble,  wince,  or  bite. 

'At  the  very  basis  of  civilization  —  as  of  good  government  and 
good  homes  —  must  be  the  idea  of  personal  responsibility. 

^Mitchell's  Hinduism,  p.  50,  speaks  of  8,400,000  transmigrations, 
unless  one's  merit  sooner  releases  him.  Thirty  millions  have 
been  exaggeratingly  spoken  of,  concerning  Buddhist  teaching. 


HEREDITY.  245 

birth,  ao-e  after  age,  as  the  shadow  follows  the  sun  ?  And 
when  will  a  man  repent,  if  he  is  to  have  from  five  to  thirty 
millions  of  life  chances?  Is  not  the  way  difficult  and  full 
of  swirling  eddies?  With  .what  keen  sorrow  he  must  be 
filled,  who  struggles  with  his  fate  through  all  the  eons  of  his 
transmigration,  his  flame  of  life  perpetually  relighted  to 
light  up  new  paths  of  moral  obliquity?  "Whatever  may  be 
said  of  the  hopeless  and  hardened,  the  Oriental  peoples  are 
profoundly  religious.  ''The  one  pervading  idea  with  the 
Hindu  is  how  to  get  rid  of  future  births  and  obtain  eternal 
beatitude."^  Life  is  but  a  peril,  a  maelstrom  of  evil,  from 
which  it  is  well  nigh  impossible  to  escape,  birth  after  birth.^ 
* '  I  have  done  nothing  but  sin ;  how  many  births  must  I 
undergo?  where  will  thy  sorrows  terminate?"  So  asks  the 
dying  Hindu,  awaiting  his  final  reabsorption  in  Brahma.^ 

'T.  Ramakrishna,  Life  in  an  Indian  Tillage. 

^The  Hindu  theory  implies  that  there  is  no  forgiveness  with 
God,  the  transgressor  must  himself  drink  to  the  lowest  dregs  the 
cup  of  bitterness  which  he  has  filled. —  Mitchell,  p.  264. 

^Yet  this  fundamental  life  theory  is  Orientally  held  to  be  based 
on  sound  philosophy;  and  is  it  not  at  bottom  suggestive  of  the 
teaching  of  modern  Occidental  science  as  to  Heredity?  "One 
event,"  said  a  Bechuana  chief,  "is  always  the  son  of  another, 
and  we  must  never  forget  the  parentage."  (Cited  in  Tyler's 
Primitive  Culture,  I,  p.  5.)  If  European  scholars  do  not  say 
that  they  are  what  they  are  because  they  were  what  they  were 
in  former  lives,  they  do  say  that  they  are  in  a  measure  what  they 
are  because  their  ancestors  were  so  and  so,  that  every  man  is  heir 
to  traits  from  far  av/ay  generations;  and  for  the  future  of  man- 
kind they  have  no  hope  save  through  the  improvement  of  the 
individual  age  after  age  —  as  the  Orientals  say  that  individual 
improvement  must  come  about  through  myriads  of  new  births. 
Occasionally,  a  very  intelligent  Buddhist  monk  may  be  found  to 
say  that  he  no  longer  teaches  the  dogmas  of  Karma  and  of  trans- 
migration, but  teaches  "heredity" —  inexorable  as  fate. 

For  a  carefully  matured  statement,  seeking  further  to  reconcile 
the  Oriental  and  Occidental  philosophies  as  to  Karma,  vide  Appen- 
dix D,  infra. 

And  as  for  transmigration,  do  not  Western  psj'^chologists  note 
occasional  mental  conceptions  which  suggest  in  a  shadovv'y  sense 


246  ACQUIRING  MORAL  MERIT. 

THE  THEORY  OP  ACCUMULATING  MORAL  MERIT. 

As  to  a  further  point  in  the  non-Christian  scheme  for  get- 
ting rid  of  moral  evil,  we  are  now  brought  face  to  face  with 
the  Sacred  Book  theories  and  human  life  practices  of  more 
than  nine  hundred  millions  of  people  in  accumulating 
moral  merit,  whether  or  not  during  ages  of  transmigration : 
this  being  characteristic  of  four^  of  the  five  great  religions, 
or  moral  philosophical  systems,  of  the  world. 

What  is  Islam?  It  might  be  spoken  of  as  a  ceremonial 
righteousness:  the  recitation  of  a  creed  expressing  belief 
in  God  and  IMahomet,  punctilious  ablutions  and  prayer,  the 
giving  of  alms,  and  the  observance  of  certain  fast  days  and 
pilgrimages, —  in  this  routine  every  man  for  himself  being 
accountable  to  God.  There  is  nothing  else  to  be  believed,  nor 
are  there  other  duties  to  be  done.^  The  most  devout  of  the 
Moslems,  however,  hold  that  faith  to  be  complete  must  show 
itself  in  works. ^     And  if  on  the  part  of  great  multitudes 

that  one's  present  experience  is  not  unlike  what  he  has  known 
before?  This  admitted  psychological  phenomenon  has  now  and 
then  led  a  metaphysical  student  in  Christendom  to  believe  in 
transmigration, —  a  famous  American  author  now  living  being 
one  of  them. 

'Professor  M.  Monier-Williams  stated  in  an  address  before  the 
British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society,  188G,  that  he  had  devoted  his 
time  for  forty-two  years,  to  the  study  of  the  Oriental  Sacred 
Books  —  the  Vedas,  Puranas,  the  Zend  Avesta,  the  Buddhist 
Tripitaka,  the  Chinese  books,  and  the  Koran, —  and  that  he  found 
one  key-note  running  through  them  all, —  salvation  by  works. — 
Compare  original  address,  Missionary  Herald,  October,  1886,  Bos- 
ton, and  the  author's  revision.  The  Holy  Bible  and  the  Sacred 
Books  of  the  East,  p.  24.     London,  1887. 

-Any  standard  work  upon  Islam  will  affirm  this.  Consult  the 
writings  of  Mr.  Stanley  Lane  Poole;  and  D wight's  Constantinople, 
p.  58.  The  statement  in  Stobart's  Islam  (p.  236,  London)  in 
regard  to  the  Mohammedan  requirements  in  India  tallies  with 
other  authorities. 

Taith  —  acknowledgment  with  the  heart, —  must  be  supple- 
mented by  works.  This  is  the  normal  statement.  Vide  Macdon- 
ald's  Muslim  Theology,  pp.  127,  296. 


ISLAM.  247 

these  duties  seem  to  be  stereotyped  and  performed  almost 
mechanically,  without  a  sense  of  the  need  of  repentance,  or 
need  of  self-denial  for  the  good  of  others,  is  not  the  same 
thing  true  of  great  populations  of  so-called  Christians?  Is 
not  Christendom  crowded  with  nominal  Christians  who  are 
in  practical  sympathy  with  Moslems  who  cite  the  Koran, — 
"God  hath  not  laid  on  you  any  hardship  in  religion?"^ 
"Each  step  taken  by  the  devotee  towards  the  Kaaba  blots 
out  a  sin. "  It  is  not  long  since  a  pilgrim  of  Northern  India 
set  out  for  Mecca :  he  bought  a  ticket  to  Bombay,  then 
paid  for  himself  as  freight, —  he  wore  six  hundred  pounds 
of  iron  chains;  to  the  reporters  he  said  that  he  began 
in  youth  to  put'  away  his  sins,  and  he  added  one  chain  to 
another  as  often  as  he  broke  his  good  resolutions.  This  pil- 
grimage he  was  bound  to,  unless  he  could  secure  another  to 
make  it  for  him.  The  few  simple  things  that  the  Koran 
commands,  one  cannot  evade :  it  is  his  salvation.  Under 
the  law  of  Islam  a  man  is  as  much  bound  to  perform  the 
ablution  as  he  is  to  pay  his  taxes.^  A  prayer  is  a  merit,  a 
satisfaction,  an  atonement  for  wrongdoing  :^  yet  that  it  is  a 
merit  does  not  impugn  its  sincerity  in  the  hearts  of  a  great 
multitude  who  listen  to  the  intoned  and  musical  call  to 
prayer,  ringing  age  after  age  in  the  cities  of  the  Orient : — 
* '  God  is  most  great.  I  testify  there  is  no  God  but  God.  I 
testify  that  Mohammed  is  the  messenger  of  God.     Come  to 

'The  fast  throughout  the  month  Ramazan  illustrates  this:  — 
food  must  not  be  partaken  of  by  day,  but  feasting  is  lawful  by 
night. —  Dwight's  Constantinople,  p.  GG.  And  the  obligation  to 
perform  the  great  pilgrimage  is  suitably  tempered  by  the  doc- 
trine that  one  must  go,  if  he  can  afford  the  expense. 

The  Bedouin  Arabs  say:  "We  bathe  not,  because  we  must  drink 
the  water  of  ablution;  we  give  no  alms,  because  we  have  to  ask 
them;  we  fast  not  the  Ramazan  month,  because  we  starve 
throughout  the  year;  and  we  do  no  pilgrimage,  because  the  world 
is  the  house  of  Allah." — Burton's  Pilgrimage,  III:  80. 

'The  Bible  and  Islam,  by  Professor  Henry  Preserved  Smith,  p. 
308.     New  York.  1897. 

^Bihle  and  Islam,  p.  24G,  with  citations  from  the  Koran. 


248  ACQUIRING  MORAL  MERIT. 

prayer.  Come  to  salvation.  Prayer  is  better  than  sleep. 
God  is  most  great.     There  is  no  God  but  God. '  '^ 

Salvation  by  works  and  a  pessimistic  view  of  life  are  the 
two  characteristics  common  to  all  sects  of  Hinduism  i^  salva- 
tion by  merit  somehow  acquired.^  As  sin  is  held  to  be  a 
neglect  of  prescribed  rites,  deliverance  is  through  observ- 
ances of  worship  and  keeping  many  feast  or  fast  daj^s  and 
making  pilgrimages.  Seven  holy  towns,  seven  sacred  con- 
fluences of  the  Indian  rivers,  six  river  mouths,  four  holy 
residences  of  Hindu  deities,  twelve  places  sacred  to  Siva, 
five  divine  lakes,  four  shrines  of  goddesses,  and  twelve 
other  sacred  places  are  mentioned  by  Monier-Williams.* 

In  Buddhism,  while  the  various  schools  are  not  alike  in 
details  of  practice  —  customs  in  Northern  China  differing 
from  those  in  Thibet,  and  Burmah  from  Japan, —  it  is  first 
and  last  a  matter  of  balancing  sin  by  merit.  Says  Dr. 
James  Gilmour  :^ — ' '  A  man  may  have  many  sins :  that  does 
not  matter,  if  he  has  plenty  of  merit.  So  he  pays  attention 
more  to  making  merit  than  to  avoiding  sins,  believing  that 
there  is  no  difficulty  in  the  matter ;  he  can  turn  up  a  little 

'R.  Bosworth  Smith's  Lectures,  p.  29,  Note. 

The  night  call  to  prayer,  as  rendered  in  Constantinople,  is 
given  by  Dwight,  p.  52:  — 

"Oh  Mighty  God!  Oh  Glorious  God!  Thou  art  peculiar  for  great- 
ness and  graciousness.  Thou  dost  not  slumber  while  thy  ser- 
vants sleep.     Wonderful  the  watch  which  thou  dost  ever  keep. 

"Oh  slumbering  servants  of  God!  I  am  amazed  at  you  who 
slumber  while  God  wakes.  How  long  will  you  sleep?  How  can 
you  sleep  before  the  God  who  keeps  watch?  Awake  from  sleep, 
be  up  and  praise." 

That  such  calls  awaken  a  response  in  many  a  heart  truly 
devoted  to  God,  appears  supra  pp.  219,  220. 

-Professor  M.  Monier-Williams'  Brahmanism  and  Hinduism,  p. 
77.     Fourth  Edition. 

=Dr.  R.  A.  Hume,  of  Ahmednagar. 

^Brahmanism  and  Hinduism,  pp.  177-189. 

Forty-four  places  are  named  in  Ward,  in  the  second  volume 
(pp.  28-33)  of  The  Writings,  Religion,  and  Manners  of  the 
Hindus,  1816. 

'^More  About  the  Mongols,  p.  29G.     London,  1893. 


BUDDHISM.  249 

Ynore  merit  and  it  will  be  all  right.  And  thus  it  comes  that 
the  most  religious  man  in  a  community,  that  is,  the  man  who 
pays  most  attention  to  the  things  of  religion,  may  be  the 
most  sinful, —  just  as  the  richest  man  can  afford  to  spend 
most  money.  A  Mongol  thinks  that  at  the  end  of  his  life, 
there  will  be  a  sort  of  judgment  in  which  his  merit  will  be 
balanced  against  his  demerit."  Among  the  followers  of 
Oautarna,  in  the  Middle  Kingdom,  the  exact  mercantile 
mind  of  the  Chinese  is  advised  by  sagacious  instructors  to 
keep  a  strict  debit  and  credit  account  daily,  and  to  carry 
the  balances  into  the  next  year.  A  text-book  expounding 
this  system  of  moral  bookkeeping  has  been  published  in 
China, —  Merits  and  Demerits  Examined} 

Some  of  the  makers  of  merit  engage  in  works  for  the  pub- 
lic benefit.  *'I  have  seen  miles  of  stony  road,"  says  Dr. 
Gilmour,  ''cleared  and  smoothed,  and  the  stones  piled  up  in 
pyramids  by  the  pious  hands  of  one  man."-  There  was 
religious  merit  in  it.  Not  long  ago  a  Church  of  England 
missionary  in  Cheh-Kiang  reported  that  of  certain  Buddhist 
converts  to  Christianity  one  had  impoverished  himself  by 
the  meritorious  "building  of  bridges. ' '  A  Burmese  woman, 
Mah  Yu,  expended  hard  earned  money  upon  gifts  to  the 
mendicants,  made  offerings  to  idols,  bought  idols,  gave 
feasts,  made  pilgrim^ages  to  great  pagodas,  and  then  dug  a 
well  —  working  at  it  alone  for  months  —  so  deeply  digging 

^Rev.  George  Owen,  of  Pekin,  has  made  a  report  from  the  moral 
account  books  kept  by  his  Taoist  neighbors  —  Taoism  actuated 
by  Buddhist  ideas,  which  is  so  common  in  China.  If  a  man 
loves  his  wife  more  than  his  father  and  mother,  he  is  charged  a 
hundred  demerits  for  it,  and  the  same  number  of  ill  marks  if  he 
eats  roast  dog  or  boiled  beef.  On  the  other  hand,  to  exhort  a 
mother  not  to  commit  infanticide  counts  thirty  marks  credit; 
and  to  save  a  child's  life,  fifty.  To  destroy  the  plates  of  obscene 
books  counts  three  hundred  credit.  Life-long  chastity  counts 
credit  of  a  thousand  marks.  Yet  it  is  impossible  for  the  most 
conscientious  to  get  ahead  much;  it  being  reported  of  one  who 
tried  it  for  forty-seven  years,  that  he  accumulated  only  4,973 
merits,  as  against  298,000  black  marks. 

^Among  the  Mongols,  p.  219. 


250  ACQUIRING  MORAL  MERIT. 

as  to  insure  a  perennial  flow;  and  she  saw  processions  of 
priests  and  her  neighbors  and  strangers  from  far-away 
lands  pausing  to  drink  at  the  well  she  had  dug, —  yet  all 
this  gave  her  no  spiritual  peace. 

There  are  certain  phases  of  the  Buddhistic  merit-making 
which  suggest  the  inquiry  already  alluded  to,  whether  this 
form  of  faith  does  not  pertain  to  a  pristine  type  of  religious 
development, —  the  same  thing  being  true  of  rude  Christian 
types  with  ascetic  customs  and  relic  worship.  Witness  Wu 
T'ai  Shan,  the  Mecca  of  the  Buddhist  Mongolions,  in  the 
Province  of  Shansi,  in  Northern  China.  Here,  in  addition 
to  three  hundred  ordinary  prayer  mills,  there  is  one  large 
revolving  tower  sixty  feet  high,  which  has  on  it  not  only  the 
common  supply  of  prayers  but  a  vast  number  of  idols, 
which  are  worshipped  as  a  whole  by  turning  a  crank,  instead 
of  bowing  to  them  one  by  one.  Besides,  this  tower  has 
more  sacred  books  in  its  niches  than  one  could  read  in  a 
lifetime,  and  two  or  three  pilgrims  go  into  the  cellar  below 
and  wheel  round  the  tower  by  handspokes,  so  gaining  as 
much  merit  as  if  they  had  read  all  the  books,  as  well  as  said 
all  the  prayers,  and  bovv-ed  to  all  the  images.  One  pilgrim- 
age to  this  spot  gains  so  much  moral  credit  with  Karma  as 
to  count  for  one  meritorious  life  in  one  future  transmigra- 
tion, and  two  pilgrimages  for  two  lives,  and  so  on.  The  pil- 
grims are  there  to-day,  working  that  wheel  in  that  cellar.^ 
Similar  revolving  libraries  are  also  found  in  Buddhist  tem- 
ples in  Japan,  and  in  different  parts  of  China.-  The  volu- 
minous sacred  books  are  bulky, —  two  feet  long,  eight  inches 
wide,  and  four  thick.  They  are  kept  in  the  temples,  and 
loaned  out  by  the  cartload,  or  transported  by  a  train  of 
camels.     Doctor  Gilmour  found  a  wealthy  Mongol  who  had 

^Gilmour,  Among  the  Mongols,  pp.  141-146.  Religious  Tract 
Society,   London. 

M.  Hue  saw  men,  women  and  children  flat  on  their  faces, 
crawling  in  the  mud  around  the  walls  of  monasteries,  with  enor- 
mous piles  of  prayerbooks  upon  their  backs;  this  counting  to 
them  as  much  merit  as  if  they  had  recited  all  the  prayers. 

^Miss  Gordon-Cumming,  Wanderings  in  China,  Vol.  II,  p.  195. 
Blackwood,  ISSC. 


BUDDHISM.  261 

ten  volumes  in  his  tent.  Once  a  year  he  hired  ten  lamas  to 
read  them  through  for  him  by  the  day's  work,  each  reading 
aloud,  simultaneously,  without  listeners.^  By  it  he  earned 
religious  merit. 

Some  gain  merit  by  hearing  sermons;  and  some  by  the 
repetition  of — "Om  mani  padme  hum,"  "Ah,  the  jewel  is 
in  the  lotus."  This,  "the  six  syllable  prayer,"  is  used, 
much  as  Julius  Ceasar  muttered  a  charm  whenever  he 
entered  a  wheeled  vehicle.^  It  is  inscribed  over  and  over 
again  upon  paper  rolls,  which  are  placed  in  a  metallic  cylin- 
der, whose  whirling  accumulates,  by  each  turn,  as  much 
prayer  merit  as  if  the  devotee  were  to  repeat  the  words 
orally  as  many  times  as  the  inscription  is  made.  The  sylla- 
bles refer  to  an  old  tradition  of  a  miraculous  living  Bud- 
dha who  appeared  from  out  a  lotus  flower.^  Men,  women, 
children,  repeat  these  syllables  whenever  they  get  time, 
from  morning  till  night,  and  take  a  turn  at  the  prayer- 
mill  crank  when  they  can.  The  Buddhist  monks  or  lamas, 
who  have  leisure  for  it,  write  or  print  the  words  some  mil- 
lions of  times,  and  enclose  them  in  cylinders  as  large  as  bar- 
rels, which  are  set  up  in  temples  or  places  of  resort,  so  that 
any  passer-by  can  twirl  them.  Baron  Schilling  reports  the 
preparation  of  a  hundred  million  copies  of  the  six  syllables 
for  one  cylinder  in  Thibet.  Sir  Monier  Monier-Williams 
saw  an  old  lady,  at  a  Himalayan  resort,  who  twirled  a  small 
cylinder  in  her  left  hand,  as  one  would  shake  a  child's  rat- 
tle, and  she  turned  a  barrel  cylinder  with  her  right  hand, 
and  meantime  she  was  uttering  the  six  syllables  sixty  times 
a  minute.*     Clockwork  power,  wind-mills,  and  water-mills 

^More  Adout  the  Mongols,  p.  28G. 

='Pliny,  Natural  History,  XXVIII,  2   (4). 

*The  self-creative  force  in  the  kosmos. —  Rhys  Davids'  Bud- 
dhism, pp.  210,  211. 

*'Vide  Buddhism,  pp.  371-381.  While  conversing  with  her  call- 
ers, a  woman,  thrifty  at  accumulating  merit,  will  turn  the  prayer 
wheel,  much  as  a  countrywoman  in  rural  Christendom  may  take 
up  her  knitting.  Dr.  Gilmour  says  that  the  Mongolians,  not 
knowing  the  meaning  of  the  words,  repeat  the  prayer  incessantly 
while  performing  the  ordinary  domestic  duties. 


252  ACQUIRING  MORAL  MERIT. 

are  common  for  turning  the  crank  of  a  prayer  machine; 
and  one  Zassak  lama,  in  the  P'u  Sa  T'ing  temple  at  Wu 
T'ai,  is  reported  with  a  paper  prayer-mill  running  day  and 
night  by  the  hot  air  rising  from  his  brazier,  as  we  sometimes 
see  toy  wheels  whirling  near  a  stove  pipe.  It  is  another 
device  to  fly  the  six  syllables  upon  flags,  a  whole  village 
devoutly  gaining  merit  with  flags  from  half  the  houses. 
They  utilize  every  available  motive  power,  and  would  use 
steam  if  they  could  get  it.  Miss  Isabella  Bird's  Unheaien 
Tracks  in  Japan^  describes  a  Buddhist  idol  which  was  pro- 
tected by  a  wire  netting,  against  which  paper  spitballs  were 
thrown  by  the  worshippers,  the  paper  having  been  first 
inscribed  with  a  prayer.  If  the  wet  ball  caught  in  the  net- 
ting, the  prayer  would  not  be  answered.-  Much  more  might 
be  said  to  illustrate  the  hypothesis,  that  we  have,  in  the 
practical  daily  life  of  Buddhism,  religious  activity  of  a 
primitive  type.  An  intelligent  Pan  jab  Sikh  told  Sir  M. 
Monier-Williams^  that  his  ordinary  morning  and  evening 
prayer  was  the  "Jap-jee,"  occupying  six  pages  of  print; 
and  that  he  once  made  a  pilgrimage  to  a  holy  well  near 
Amritsur,  where,  descending  eighty-five  steps,  he  bathed, 
then  ascended  one  step  and  repeated  his  Jap-jee,  then,  bath- 
ing again,  he  ascended  another  step,  and  repeated  the  Jap- 
jee,  and  so  for  the  whole  eighty-five  steps.  It  took  fourteen 
hours;  from  five  in  the  evening  till  seven  next  morning. 
' '  I  hope, ' '  he  added,  ' '  that  I  have  laid  up  an  abundant  store 
of  merit,  which  will  last  me  for  a  long  time. ' ' 

Yet  that  which  is  grotesque  in  any  system  is  not  to  be  held 
up  to  caricature  the  founders  of  the  faith.  Diogenes  was 
not  the  typical  Greek  philosopher :  Aristotle  and  Plato  and 
Socrates  did  not  live  in  three  tubs.  The  mighty  Prince  of 
India,  v/ho  sent  forth  his  peaceful  and  well-disciplined  and 

'Vol.  I,  p.  71. 

-Intelligent  monks  in  Japan  afRrm  that  while  the  idols  and 
charms  are  not  of  intrinsic  value,  they  are  of  value  to  the  com- 
mon people,  who  cannot  understand  the  profound  truths  of  the 
Buddhist  system. 

'Buddhism,  pp.  546,  547. 


BUDDHIST  DEVOTION.  253 

enthusiastic  hosts  to  the  heathen,  and  who  broke  up  the 
primeval  idolatries  of  Southern  and  Eastern  Asia,  is  not  to 
be  ridiculed  for  the  prayer-mills  of  Thibet  or  the  Sunrise 
Kingdom.  The  difference  between  the  Prince  of  India  and 
the  crank-turners  of  high  Asia  is  only  matched  by  the  dif- 
ference in  Clii'istendom  between  Jesus  of  Nazareth  and 
Simeon  Stylites. 

And  even  if  pages  might  be  filled  illustrating  the  mechan- 
ical way  in  which  Christianity  is  held  by  the  ignorant  —  as 
when  the  cooking  of  eggs  is  timed  by  the  recitation  of  Pater 
Nosters, —  it  would  prove  nothing  against  the  religious  sys- 
tem as  such.  Does  not  the  world's  merit-making  make  for 
itself  a  place  in  .Christendom,  in  its  salvation  by  works? 
Yet  the  calculation  to  a  nicety  how  much  to  do,  and  how 
much  can  be  safely  left  undone,  does  not  characterize  the 
highest  types  of  manhood.  Did  not  the  Roman  find  it  easy, 
by  punctilious  attention  to  his  ritual,  not  to  pay  too  much 
to  his  religious  account?  Yet  he  must  be  indeed  cold- 
blooded and  self-conceited  who  would  set  at  naught  the 
prayers  of  two-thirds  of  mankind  throughout  the  millen- 
niums of  history.  Although  it  might  be  easy  to  show  that 
devotees  have  crude  ideas,  yet  there  must  be  often  a  sin- 
cere seeking  after  the  Infinite  by  the  finite,  according  to  the 
best  finite  knowledge  and  belief.  Dr.  Legge^  affirms  that, 
although  Confucian  prayers  and  oblations  express  no 
sense  of  guilt  or  of  dependence,  they  are  the  tribute  of  duty 
and  gratitude.  They  are  good  so  far  as  they  go.  RockhiU, 
in  his  Land  of  the  Lamas,-  has  told  us  that  in  the  large  vil- 
lages and  towns,  as  night  falls,  the  Buddhist  temples  light 
their  altars,  and  there  is  a  chanting  service ;  and  at  the  same 
moment,  all  over  the  town,  people  ascend  to  their  fiat  roofs 
and  burn  aromatic  juniper  boughs  and  sing  a  hymn  or 
litany.  Every  morning,  too,  there  is  a  burning  of  juniper, 
and  offerings  are  placed  before  the  household  gods.  It 
must  be  that  the  All-Father  has  discovered,  during  many 

^Religions  of  China,  p.  53. 
=Page  248.     New  York,  1891. 


254  TO  ERADICATE  MORAL  EVIL, 

ages,  many  devout  persons  turning  the  quaint  wheels,  the 
creaking  and  cumbersome  machinery  voicing  a  true  yearn- 
ing for  the  moral  beauty  once  imaged  by  the  jewel  in  the 
heart  of  the  lotus. 

VI. 

THE  CHRISTIAN  CONCEPT  FOR  REMOVING  MORAL  EVIL. 

The  contrasted  Christian  scheme  for  dealing  with  moral 
obliquity  pursues  a  course  diametrically  opposite : — 

Relying  on  God's  mercy  and  not  on  man's  merit;  engag- 
ing in  good  works,  not  for  their  merit,  but  from  the  motive 
of  love  to  God  and  love  to  man : 

And  to  this  the  condition  precedent  is  a  clearly  defined 
apprehension  of  God  as  the  Moral  Governor,  and  perception 
of  man's  personal  responsibility  for  sin  as  the  violation 
of  the  law  of  love.  The  non-Christian  systems  deal  with 
no  personal  God,  or  they  misapprehend  his  love.  The 
devout  Prince  of  India  is  represented  by  his  disciples  as 
saying:  ''In  everything  I  am  without  a  spot.  I  am  with- 
out desire ;  a  delivered  one.  By  my  own  power  I  possess 
knowledge.  I  have  no  teacher.  None  is  compared  to  me. 
In  the  world,  including  the  heavens,  there  is  no  one  like  unto 
me.  I  am  the  Supreme  Master,  the  perfect  Buddha." 
Gautama  did  not  look  for  superior  help  nor  set  forth  any 
God  whatsoever :  self-sufficient,  he  taught  men  by  the  hun- 
dreds of  millions  to  look  to  themselves,  never  to  a  Divine 
Helper,^  but  plod  on  through  millions  of  lives  of  transmi- 
gration in  heroic  struggling  for  self-mastery  and  the  extin- 
guishment of  all  earthly  desire. 

With  a  firm  grip  upon  the  idea  of  God's  personality  and 
his  love;  a  clear  idea  of  the  Divine  Moral  Law  —  love  to 

'It  is  noteworthy  that  prayer  is  not  prominent  in  Siam,  where 
Buddhism  is  purest.  Although  the  efficacy  of  prayer  is  not 
acknowledged,  there  is  recognized  a  subjective  value  in  the  exer- 
cise of  altruistic  desires. — Vide  Rhys  Davids'  Buddhism,  pp.  168, 
170,  171. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  CONCEPT,  255 

God  and  man;  a  conception  of  sin  as  the  neglect  of  love; 
a  sharp  sense  of  one's  own  personality;  a  conviction  of  the 
urgent  necessity  for  settling  moral  questions  here  and  now, 
rather  than  during  five  millions  or  thirty  millions  of  chances 
in  transmigratory  life ;  and  looking  to  God  for  mercy  rather 
than  to  self  for  merit; — these  points  are  involved  in  the 
Christian  thought  of  removing  moral  evil  from  the  world. 
Christianity  first  and  foremost  apprehends  God  as  the 
Moral  Governor,  the  God  "with  whom  we  have  to  do;"  w^ho 
will  enforce  the  Moral  Law,  holding  every  man  responsible 
if  he  fails  in  love  to  the  All-Father  or  in  love  to  his  children 
—  the  whole  family  of  man, —  making  love  the  rule  by 
authority  not  by  a  bureau  of  advice. 

These  ideas,  as  an  influence  upon  racial  stock,  during 
twenty-five  centuries,  have  formed  an  alert  and  decisive 
character  in  men  who  are  consciously  and  steadily  held  by 
Infinite  Personal  Power  to  a  life  of  universal  love,  and  for 
its  neglect  constantly  arraigned  at  the  bar  of  conscience  and 
the  bar  of  God.  The  neglect  of  love  is  held  by  Christianity 
as  engaging  a  man  in  a  contest  with  his  Maker,  an  attempt 
to  overthrow  the  Supreme  Ruler  so  far  as  the  man's  selfish, 
insignificant,  finite  will  can  do  it ;  the  neglect  of  love,  in  the 
second  table  of  the  law,  engaging  a  man  in  a  war  with  all 
mankind  —  could  his  personal  selfishness  have  full  sway : 
so  man  is  held  in  bonds  of  guilt,  responsible,  needing  at  this 
hour  to  make  peace  with  God  and  amends  to  his  fellows. 

Men  made  on  this  model  are  good  haters  of  evil :  perfect 
love  being  inimical  to  all  that  injures  the  objects  of  love. 
Was  it  not  this,  that  Thomas  Arnold  taught  his  Rugby  boys : 
*'Do  not  I  hate  them,  0  Lord,  that  hate  thee  ?"^  How  could 
Arnold  do  otherwise?  Without  goodness,  says  Bacon,  man 
is  a  busy,  mischievous,  wretched  thing,  no  better  than  a  kind 
of  vermin.-  Without  a  rigid  line  between  right  and  wrong, 
society  is  impossible;  without  it  the  globe  itself  is  but  a 

'Psalms  139:  21;  97:  10.  Amos  5:  15.  Romans  12:  9.  Hebrews 
1:  9. 

^Essays  XIII. 


256  MOR^U.  GOVERNMENT. 

suburb  of  the  world  of  woe.  Must  not  ineffable  spiritual 
loss  follow  him  in  all  worlds,  who  does  not  accept  the  law 
of  love  and  guide  his  life  by  it? 

As  an  influence  upon  racial  stock,  the  adoration  of  Krish- 
na's image,  with  his  stolen  butter  ball,  has  confused  the 
sense  of  right  and  wrong  generation  after  generation  in  the 
households  of  India.^  The  Dnyanodaya,  a  native  paper^ 
published  in  Bombay,  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  there 
is  no  text  in  the  Hindu  Sacred  Books  which  affirms  that  God 
hates  sin  and  desires  that  men  should  be  saved  from  sin  and 
made  pure  in  heart,  and  calls  upon  any  person  who  has 
found  such  a  text  to  point  out  chapter  and  verse.  Gautama 
counselled  his  disciples  to  control  passion  and  forgive  inju- 
ries, but  never  taught  them  to  become  hearty  haters  of  evil 
and  to  remain  in  society  in  order  to  combat  it:  they  were 
rather  to  withdraw  from  the  world.  When,  however,  the 
early  Buddhists  went  to  Ceylon,  it  was  with  the  terrors  of 
the  law,  so  vividly  depicted  in  the  frescoes  of  Dalada  Mali- 
gawa,  at  Kandy:  yet  the  teaching  of  the  Master  to  repress 
desire  finally  had  its  effect  in  quenching  the  desire  of  the 
monks  even  for  the  moral  reformation  of  the  common  peo- 
ple. Nor  is  it  too  much  to  affirm  that  during  age  after  age, 
Buddhism  has  been  the  opiate  of  Asia.  Not  for  centuries 
has  the  moral  sense  of  Burmah,  Siam,  or  Japan  been  dis- 
turbed by  moral  austerities,  duties,  or  discipline  unwelcome 
to  the  natural  man.  Comfortable,  amiable  animal  enjoy- 
ment, with  never  a  twinge  of  conscience,  for  the  laity,  with, 
apathy  and  self-satisfaction  for  their  religious  leaders, — 

'Pictures  are  often  found  in  Hindu  homes  representing  the- 
immoralities  of  Krishna.  The  story  of  his  early  life  has  exer- 
cised an  immense  influence  for  evil  in  debasing  the  Hindu  mind. 
(Mitchell's  Hinduism,  p.  115.)  In  the  Indian  books,  Krishna  is 
habitually  unchaste.  Siva,  too,  and  his  wife  were  constantly  at. 
odds  over  his  domestic  infidelity.  No  wholesome  life,  no  national 
integrity  can  come  through  the  worship  of  such  deities.  The 
shameless  course  of  the  river  Brahmans,  in  dealing  with  defense- 
less pilgrims,  follows  the  worship  of  gods  to  whom  sinful  acts. 
are  but  sport. 


THE  NEGATIONS  OF  BUDDHISM.  257 

this  has  been  the  outward  aspect  of  Buddhism,  since  the 
opening  of  the  Orient  to  European  observers.  The  popular 
sense  of  the  enormity  of  social  wrongs  has  been  so  dull,  and 
many  rampant  vices  have  met  so  little  cheek,  that  no 
steadily  glowing  wrath  has  been  kindled  against  evildoers. 
In  Ceylon,  Sir  Emerson  Tennent  observed  the  practical 
working  of  the  system  half  a  century  ago,  after  an  undis- 
turbed and  supreme  Buddhistic  rule  of  more  than  twenty 
centuries : — 

''In  their  daily  intercourse  and  acts,  morality  and  virtue 
are  barely  discernible  as  the  exception.  Neither  hopes  nor 
apprehensions  have  proved  a  sufficient  restraint  on  the 
habitual  violation  of  all  those  precepts  of  charity  and  hon- 
esty, of  purity  and  truth,  which  form  the  very  essence  of 
their  doctrine.  Jealousy,  slander,  litigation,  and  revenge 
prevail,  to  an  unlooked-for  excess.  Falsehood  is  of  ubi- 
quitous prevalence.  In  the  courts  of  law  the  testimony  of 
every  magistrate  is  concurrent  that  perjury  on  both  sides 
is  habitual.  Theft  is  equally  prevalent  with  prevarication, 
and  deceit  and  fraud  is  so  notorious  and  habitual  that  the 
feeling  of  confidence  is  almost  unknown."  These  charges 
are  suitably  completed  by  quoting  the  manuscript  testimony 
of  the  Baptist  missionary  Davies,  that  "  in  a  Singhalese  vil- 
lage licentiousness  is  so  universal  that  it  has  ceased  to  be 
opprobriovis.  "^  This  accords  with  the  testimony  of  the 
government  more  recently,  that  there  are  probably  more 
murders  in  Ceylon,  in  proportion  to  the  population,  than 
in  any  other  country  in  the  world.-  IMeantime,  the  monas- 
tic power  has  not  made  itself  morally  felt;  the  peasantry 
knowing  little  more  religion  than  that  it  is  the  custom 
now  and  then  to  lay  a  few  flowers  before  a  certain  Bo-tree, 
that  there  is  a  temple  and  a  monk,  that  it  is  the  custom 
to  give  food  to  the  monk,  who  gives  no  instruction  in  reli- 

"Christianity  in  Ceylon.  By  Sir  James  Emerson  Tennent,  pp. 
193,  228,  229,  251,  252.     London,  1850. 

^Buddhism,  in  Magadha  and  Ceylon.  By  Rt.  Rev.  Reginald 
Stephen  Copleston,  Bishop  of  Columbo,  p.  461.     London,  1892. 

'       17 


258  MORAL  GOVERNMENT. 

gion.  This  lack  of  dynamic  force,  moral  aggressiveness, 
on  the  part  of  those  who  are  preeminently  the  makers  of 
Buddhism,  produces,  as  a  social  effect,  an  unprogressive 
civilization,  with  absolutely  no  popular  sense  of  duty  to 
others.  Man  looks  out  for  himself  alone,  seeks  his  own  merit, 
and  repudiates  all  else.  As  a  negative  system,  the  better  a 
man  is  in  Gautama 's  eye  —  in  repressing  all  desire, —  the 
more  thoroughly  he  will  let  society  alone  to  shift  for  itself  as 
best  it  may.  The  social  outcome  of  all  this,  age  after  age, 
is  indicated  by  Tennent  :^  "No  national  system  of  religion, 
no  prevailing  superstition  that  has  ever  fallen  under  my 
observation  presents  so  dull  a  level,  and  is  so  preeminently 
deficient  in  popular  influences,  as  Buddhism  amongst  the 
Singhalese."  What  is  it  but  quietism  gone  to  seed? 
Energy  and  expansion  find  no  place.  Will  not  Asia  be 
always  "weary-hearted,"-  so  long  as  the  brethren  of  the 
Sangha  sit  still  with  undisturbed  equanimity,  amid  unnam- 
able  vice,  wretched  poverty,  social  misadjustments,  crowd- 
ing up  to  their  sacred  doors.  There  was  never  a  time 
v/hen  the  European  monks  of  the  middle  ages  ceased  to  be  a 
positive  element  in  the  civilization  of  the  continent,  yet 
Christianity  rid  itself  soon  of  the  system,  save  a  few  old 
endowments;  monasticism  was  a  temporary  expedient,  an 
experiment  in  Christendom,  but  the  Buddhists  have  had 
twenty-five  hundred  years  of  it.^  Gautama,  with  his  singu- 
larly penetrating  moral  insight,  could  see  no  way  out  of  the 
religious  tangle  of  Brahmanism,  with  its  endless  rites,  save 
by  a  change  in  the  moral  life  itself,  yet,  in  rejecting  popular 
pantheism  and  polytheism,  he  thought  of  man  as  without  a 
moral  governor  outside  himself;  therefore,  amid  the  hope- 
less wrangling  of  the  peoples,  he  counselled  peace  and  qui- 
etude of  life.  The  better  he  was  himself  morally,  the  more 
force  did  his  mighty  personality  exercise  in  taking  out  from 
society  —  when  Buddhism  was  most  prosperous  —  not  less 
than  ten  millions  in  a  single  generation  of  those  who  were 

^Christianity  in  Ceylon,  p.  229.     London,  1850. 

*Bunsen's  phrase,  God  in  History,  Vol.  I,  p.  375.     London,  18G8. 

Wide  Christian  Monasticism  in  Appendix  A.,  infra. 


CELESTIAL   NEED  OF  A   MORAL   GOVERNOR.  259 

the  most  spiritual,  bidding  them  quench  all  desire,  even  for 
the  betterment  of  the  world;  several  hundreds  of  millions 
of  monks,  all  told,  first  and  last,  being  so  withdrawn  from 
moral  contests  in  Asiatic  social  life.  As  a  race  factor,  this 
has  made  a  vast  difference  as  to  the  repression  of  what  is 
worst  in  the  Orient ;  it  being  probable  that  the  gross  number 
of  monks  during  seventy-five  generations  must  be  reckoned 
by  hundreds  of  millions,  and  these  men,  whom  we  believe 
to  have  been,  as  a  whole,  morally  the  best  natives  of  Eastern 
and  Southern  Asia,  have  not  only  impoverished  society  by 
withdrawing  themselves  from  effecting  an  improvement  of 
society  through  heredity,  but  by  withdrawing  their  influ- 
ence from  contesting  moral  evil. 

As  another  illustration  of  the  difference  between  Chris- 
tian and  non-Christian  racial  ideas  upon  moral  government, 
in  its  relation  to  getting  rid  of  moral  evil  in  the  world,  take 
China.  God  is  known  in  China, — ''Heaven"  being  wor- 
shipped twice  a  year  by  the  patriarchal  emperor  in  behalf 
of  all  his  people ;  but  God  is  never  known  as  the  Moral  Gov- 
ernor,—  the  theory  on  which  life  is  carried  on  in  China 
being  that  men  are  responsible  to  the  emperor,  but  it  is  not 
taught  that  they  are  amenable  to  "Heaven,"  so  that  if 
anything  is  forbidden  by  civic  law  it  must  not  be  done,  and 
in  what  the  law  does  not  prohibit  a  man  does  what  he 
pleases.  It  is  the  common  belief  in  China  that  Confucius 
justified  lying  at  convenience  when  deception  might  be 
advantageous,  by  affirming  that,  since  the  gods  did  not  hear 
a  forced  oath,  it  could  be  broken ;  the  end  is,  therefore,  held 
all  over  the  empire  to  justify  the  means;  when  a  lie  is 
proved  it  is  said,  "Yes,  as  you  say,  it  is  a  lie;  it  is."  The 
average  man  —  unrestrained  by  Moral  Law  —  is  not  actu- 
ated by  the  fear  of  wrongdoing,  but  of  the  consequences  of 
being  caught ;  the  stupidity  or  bungling  management  which 
leads  to  the  discovery  of  wrongdoing,  being  universally 
blamed,  and  the  crime  itself  scarcely  mentioned.^     Samuel 

*In  a  personal  communication  from  Dr.  C.  A.  Stanley,  for  more 
than  thirty  years  a  resident  of  Tien  Tsin. 


260  MORAL  GOVERNMENT. 

Wells  Williams,  LL.  D.,  Professor  in  Yale  University,  lived 
in  China  forty-two  years,  first  as  missionary  in  1835,  then 
as  secretary  and  interpreter  to  the  American  legation  at 
Pekin.  He  wrote  a  book  on  the  empire  in  1848,  and  revised 
it  in  1883.  He  was  conservative  and  careful  in  the  expres- 
sion of  his  matured  judgment  upon  the  Chinese  character, 
based  upon  the  observations  and  studies  of  two  score  years ; 
he  speaks  of  "deceit  everywhere,"  "the  universal  practice 
of  lying  and  dishonest  dealing,"  the  want  of  public  and  pri- 
vate charity,  and  ' '  a  kind  and  degree  of  moral  degradation, 
of  which  an  excessive  statement  can  scarcely  be  made,  or  an 
adequate  conception  hardly  be  formed. '  '^  Was  it  not  more 
than  sixty  years  ago  when  Samuel  Kidd-  wrote  that  ' '  false- 
hood, duplicity,  insincerity,  are  national  features  remarka- 
bly prominent?"^  Williamson  said,  in  regard  to  the  Celes- 
tial Kingdom,  ' '  There  is  no  truth  in  the  country. '  '*  Profes- 
sor Kobert  K.  Douglas,  LL.  D., —  of  the  British  Museum, 
and  Professor  of  Chinese  at  King's  College, —  has  stated  in 
the  British  Encyclopedia,  that  dishonesty  and  untruthful- 
ness are  national  Chinese  Characteristics.^  Lansdell,  after 
saying  that  Hanchow,  with  its  half  million  people,  is  at  the 
present  day  full  of  abominations  that  cannot  be  mentioned, 
adds  that  the  most  painful  statement  was  the  deliberately 
expressed  opinion  of  an  Englishman  who  had  lived  for 
many  years  in  the  northwest  of  China  proper,  and  who  went 
so  far  as  to  say  that  the  Chinese  people,  there,  were  the  most 
wicked,  filthy  and  abominable  people,  he  thought,  upon  the 
face  of  the  earth.  These  were  not  the  words  of  an  enemy. 
He  had,  moreover,  exceptional  facilities  for  knowing  the 

^Middle  Kingdom,  Vol.  II,  pp.  96-99.     Early  edition.     New  York. 

-A  clergyman  and  principal  of  the  London  Missionary  College 
at  Malacca,  and  afterwards  Professor  of  Chinese  in  the  University 
College,  London,  who  in  his  time,  was  considered  the  first  Chinese 
scholar  in  England. 

^China,  p.  205.     London,  1841. 

*North  China,  Vol.  I,  pp.  4-8. 

^Professor  Douglas  resided  some  years  in  China,  and  has  made 
a  specialty  of  Chinese  studies  during  forty  years. 


MORAL  RESPONSIBILITY.  261 

Chinese  of  the  interior.^     Is  this  the  outcome  of  the  Con- 
fucian centuries  of  a  popular  ignorance  of  God  ? 

Yet  stating  too  briefly  is  stating  too  strongly.  The  Chi- 
nese live  below  their  Classic  ideals: — "When  you  see  the 
right,  do  it.  When  you  know  a  fault,  correct  it.  Neither 
yield  to  excess,  if  rich;  nor  swerve  from  right,  if  poor." 
Missionary  Lowrie  found  nobility  of  life  in  the  better  class 
of  villagers.  "We  are  alone,  no  one  knows,"  said  one  who 
would  bribe  an  upright  official.  "Heaven  knows;  earth 
knows;  you  know;  and  I  know,"  replied  the  incorruptible. 
Yet  besides  advice,  the  nation  at  large  needs  a  Moral  Gov- 
ernor holding  men  personally  responsil)le  for  moral  choice 
and  action. 

CHRISTIAN     SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS    AND    SENSE    OF    INDIVIDUAL 
RESPONSIBILITY. 

To  illustrate  more  fully  the  difference  between  Chris- 
tianity and  the  non-Christian  faiths  in  their  ideas  as  to  the 
riddance  of  moral  evil,  take  the  point  already  alluded  to, — 
personal  responsibility ;  and  contrast  the  views  that  are  held 
of  the  intellectual  supremacy  of  conscience,  which  is  the 
practical  reason  relating  to  the  moral  conduct  of  life. 

A  well  defined  idea  of  man's  direct  moral  responsibility 
to  God  underlies  all  Christian  literature.  Sharply  formed 
personalities  are  the  component  parts  of  human  society,  the 
very  fibre  of  a  civilized  state.-  "I  AM"  is  the  God  of  a  pro- 
gressive social  evolution.  At  the  very  basis  of  a  wholesome 
individual  life  is  a  firm  sense  of  one's  personal  identity, — "I 
am,  and  I  know  it."  Besides  matter  and  force,  says  Hux- 
ley, there  is  a  third  thing,  consciousness ;  our  one  certainty 
is  the  existence  of  the  mental  world.^     This  third  factor  is 

^Chinese  Central  Asia,  II,  pp.  240,  241. 

-Compare  Moral  Evolution,  by  George  Harris,  LL.  D.,  President 
Amherst  College,  pp.  49,  53.     Boston,  1896. 

^Essays  upon  Some  Controverted  Questions,  pp.  220,  221.  Lon- 
don, 1892. 


262  THE  REMOVAL  OF  MORAL  EVIL. 

not  good  for  anything  unless  it  can  be  depended  upon  as 
much  as  matter  or  force.  Its  affirmations  are  as  solid  as 
granite,  and  its  dictum  is  as  forceful  morally  as  gravitation 
is  physically.  If  there  is  any  one  thing  settled  and  clear 
in  the  Western  mind  it  is  this,  as  contrasted  with  Eastern 
Asia, —  the  separation  of  man  from  nature  in  his  intellec- 
tual powers  and  freedom  of  will:  and  this  idea  has  been 
firmly  held  in  a  continuous  line,  during  more  than  a  hun- 
dred generations.  The  personal  God  addresses  the  indi- 
vidual man  in  the  Sacred  Books  of  Christendom,  which  are 
filled  with  personal  pronouns, —  I,  my,  me,  thou,  thy,  thee. 
The  evolution  of  the  sense  of  human  individuality  is  one  of 
the  greatest  achievements  of  Occidental  civilization.  This 
is  based  upon  the  sense  of  the  personal  responsibility  of 
every  man  immediately  to  God.^  The  most  interesting  char- 
acters of  history  have  been  nurtured  upon  the  Hebrew  liter- 
ature, permeated  as  it  is,  through  and  through,  with  the  idea 
of  human  accountability  to  the  Moral  Governor  of  mankind. 
These  great  personalities  have  lived  with  a  sense  of  acting 
for  God  and  living  to  God,  undergirded  and  strengthened 
by  celestial  power,  in  their  attempt  to  make  the  world  con- 
form to  God's  law  of  love.  To  their  individual  lives  this 
has  imparted  a  certain  dignity,  a  development  of  personal 
traits,  an  awakening  of  faculties, —  without  w^hich  the 
unique  Occidental  civilization  would  have  been  impossible. 
It  is  this  that  has  made  the  Western  nations  aggressive,  and 
apt  in  defying  difficulties ;  since  they  believe  in  the  Father 
Almighty,  Maker  of  heaven  and  earth,  who  holds  them 
responsible  for  what  they  do  or  do  not  do. 

Contrast  Asia.  In  Japan  it  is  never  said  "since  the  cre- 
ation," but  "since  the  development  of  the  universe;"  and 
whatever  occurs  in  practical  life,  it  is  popularly  said 
"there  is  no  help  for  it."  Individuality  is  of  little  value 
in  countries  where  any  and  every  human  life  is  thought  of 
as  being  but  one  passing  phase  out  of  three  score  lives 
within  two  thousand  years  past,  one  out  of  millions  more  in 

Wide  Mills'  Essay  on  Comte,  p.  112. 


SENSE  OP  INDIVIDUALITY.  263 

ages  to  come,  many  of  which  life-experiences  may  not  be  in 
the  form  of  man.  So  feeble,  indeed,  is  the  sense  of  individ- 
uality in  Buddhism,  that  the  validity  of  self-consciousness  is 
denied,  and  the  continued  existence  of  the  soul;  only  a 
quasi  personality  being  maintained  through  the  Karma,  or 
the  moral  doing  of  one  person  passing  on  to  another  person 
after  death, —  which,  however,  in  popular  speech  is  referred 
to  as  if  what  a  m.an's  antecedent  did  he  himself  did.^  In 
India,  if  all  that  exists  is  but  the  out-manifestation  of 
Brahma,  how  can  individual  manhood  find  free  play?  In 
China,  the  Confucianists  hold  individual  life  as  habitually 
subject  to  ancestral  domination ;  perhaps  this  is  remote  — 
to-day  bound  fast  to  the  limitations  imposed  by  former 
ages;  the  personality,  too,  of  every  man  repressed  by  the 
patriarchal  family  system, —  every  son  being  a  boy  so  long 
as  his  father  lives.  The  very  fibre  of  society  —  individu- 
ality of  character, —  is  lacking  in  Asia.-  There  is  no  per- 
sonal basis  to  build  on. 

In  the  Christian  concept  God  is  everywhere  represented 
as  calling  to  men, — ' '  Come,  let  us  reason  together. ' '  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  respected  the  individuality  of  his  disciples; 
laying  down  no  iron  rules,  but  giving  principles  by  which 
men  could  guide  their  own  conduct ;  and  he  taught  that  no 
matter  how  little  developed  a  man's  mind  might  be,  every 
one  can  come  into  touch  with  God  as  the  source  of  more 
abundant  individual  life.  From  the  beginning  to  the  end 
of  the  Sacred  Books  of  Christendom,  there  is  an  appeal  to 
the  hard  business  sense  of  every  individual  man,  each  being 
treated  as  a  person  by  a  Person.  Nowhere  in  the  Bible  is 
any  one  called  upon  to  go  counter  to  his  best  practical 
reason    in   things   religious.     The    only   possible    spiritual 

Wide  Rhys  Davids'  Buddhism,  pp.  105,  87-89,  150,  128,  103,  102. 

By  De  Forest,  an  eminent  authority,  it  is  stated  that  in  recent 
years  new  ideals  are  appearing  in  Japanese  life,  based  on  the 
worth  and  dignity  of  the  individual. 

="'You  will  find  no  society  in  the  East,"  was  the  remark  Secre- 
tary Seward  made  to  President  Seelye  when  setting  forth  for  the 
Orient. 


264  THE  REMOVAL  OF  MORAL  EVIL. 

progress  is  based  upon  the  right  and  duty  of  private  judg- 
ment, and  the  entertaining  of  views  that  appeal  to  the  indi- 
vidual as  rational;  every  man  first  yielding  himself  to  the 
divine  will  and  guidance,  then  by  his  own  intelligence  and 
judgment  interpreting  the  divine  will  and  guidance  in  a 
self-decision  for  which  he  is  responsible  to  God  alone.  For 
more  than  a  hundred  generations  in  one  line  of  Hebraic 
and  Christian  moral  thought,  the  Occidental  mind  has  been 
trained  and  held  fast  to  the  doctrine  that,  as  true  spiritual 
life  is  through  the  unfolding  inner  experience  of  every  man, 
rather  than  merely  observing  the  letter  of  the  law,  this  indi- 
vidual development  must  be  free, —  constantly  varying 
between  man  and  man  through  differences  in  temperament 
and  intellectual  idiosyncrasies, —  so  by  variation  forming 
moral  characters  of  the  most  pronounced  individuality  of 
manifold  types.  In  this  way  the  spiritual  experience  of  the 
"Western  world  is  progressive, —  as  in  the  very  formation  of 
the  Sacred  Literature  of  Christendom  there  was  an  expand- 
ing divine  revelation  through  unique  personalities.  The 
cosmic  development  is  crowned  only  by  the  perfected  devel- 
opment of  individual  human  life.  As  an  influence  upon 
civilization,  "personality  is  the  lever  of  the  world's  his- 
tory. '  '^  As  it  is  true  that  if  a  man  were  to  act  against  his 
best  judgment  in  business  affairs,  he  would  imperil  every- 
thing, so  he  cannot  act  against  his  best  spiritual  judgment 
without  peril  to  his  spiritual  good.  Any  one  who  will  not 
follow  his  highest  sense  of  moral  obligation  will  break  any 
law  of  God  or  man,  if  he  have  sufficient  motive.  This 
accords  with  the  early  representation  that  every  man  —  as 
a  token  of  his  manhood  —  was  made  in  the  moral  image  of  a 
personal  Creator,  who  holds  him  personally  responsible  for 
obedience  to  the  law  of  love. 

Conscience,  the  practical  reason  for  moral  guidance,  is, 
in  Occidental  thought,  set  forth  as  God's  prophet  in  every 
human  soul  —  that  highest  sense  of  moral  obligation  which 
differentiates  him  from  the  lower  animals ;-  it  is  through  his 

'Bunsen. 

Wide  Darwin's  Descent  of  Man,  Vol.  I,  p.  70. 


SUPREMACY  OP  CONSCIENCE.  265 

moral  sense  that  man  sides  with  God  in  his  mandate  to  gov- 
ern life  by  the  law  of  love  to  God  and  love  to  man.  ' '  Who 
can  but  look  with  awe  on  the  human  race,  bound  and  writh- 
ing through  all  history  in  the  sense  of  guilt,  like  the  Laocoon 
in  the  embrace  of  the  serpents,  the  marble  anguish  unchang- 
ing through  all  the  ages.  "^  A  sense  of  the  clinging  power 
of  sin,  of  its  corrupting  power,  and  its  power  to  fill  the  soul 
with  wretchedness, —  what  is  all  this  but  the  awakened  eon- 
science  ?  Christianity  is  —  for  one  thing  —  differentiated 
from  other  great  systems  of  religion  and  religious  philoso- 
phy by  its  making  a  specialty  of  developing,  educating, 
training  conscience.-  Other  religions  testify  to  the  power 
of  conscience,  and  continue  to  exist  through  the  demands  of 
conscience  for  something  to  satisfy  the  cravings  of  man's 
moral  nature.  Brahmanism,  Buddhism,  Mohammedanism, 
and  the  fetish  or  idolatrous  worship  of  barbarians,  are  wit- 
nesses to  the  religious  nature  of  man, —  a  certain  sense  of 
right  and  wrong  and  some  sort  of  moral  accountability. 
Confucius  voices  certain  principles  relating  to  the  social 
state,  which  are  approved  by  the  universal  conscience.  The 
civic  conscience  of  the  Japanese  has  been  made  the  basis  of 
the  highest  degree  of  military  eiSciency,  the  ethics  of  the 
empire  putting  duty  first,  even  if  it  ends  in  death.  Buddhism 
has  relied  upon  it  during  more  than  seventy  generations,  that 
men  in  every  generation  will  feel  the  need  of  self-contend- 
ing or  gaining  merit.  Yet  some  of  the  great  systems  of 
morality  and  religion  are  apparently  defective  in  moral 
truth  by  which  to  aid  the  development,  the  education,  and 
training  of  conscience.  The  revealed  truths  of  Christian- 
ity —  as  the  doctrines  relating  to  God,  the  moral  law,  the 
nature  of  moral  evil,  and  the  scheme  of  redemption, —  come 

^The  Kingdom  of  Christ,  by  Samuel  Harris,  LL.  D.,  Professor 
in  Yale  University,  p.  49.     Andover. 

^Bishop  Copleston  (Buddhism,  p.  99)  affirms  that  the  idea  of 
conscience  has  no  exact  counterpart  in  Buddhism,  as  implying 
moral  responsibility,  or  transgressing  the  commands  of  a  Person. 
How  foreign  the  idea  is  to  Hinduism  has  been  referred  to  by 
Professor  Kellogg,  supra,  p.  239. 


266  THE  REMOVAL  OP  MORAL  EVIL. 

to  the  aid  of  natural  religion,  and  aid  in  forming  that  con- 
scientious character,  which,  when  duly  enlightened  by  the 
well-rounded  orb  of  truth,  is  the  mainstay  of  modern 
civilization. 

As  an  influence  upon  racial  stock,  is  it  not  clear  that  the 
peoples  that  most  effectively  develop  and  educate  and  disci- 
pline man's  sense  of  right  and  wrong  will  finally  come  to  be 
the  moral  leaders  of  mankind? 

MORAL  AMENDMENT  THROUGH  MERCY  TO  THE  PENITENT  AND 
A  DIVINE  RE-ENFORCEMENT. 

Christianity,  having  many  moral  precepts  in  common 
with  other  faiths  and  philosophies,  is  not  only  differentiated 
from  them  all  in  its  central  concept  of  redemption  from  the 
power  of  moral  evil  through  divine  mercy  toward  the  peni- 
tent, but  is  distinguished  from  them  in  its  idea  of  a  divine 
re-enforcement  of  the  penitent  in  his  formation  of  a  new 
purpose  to  live  by  divine  help  in  obedience  to  moral  law. 
From  a  sociological  point  of  view,  this  is  most  helpful  in 
moral  amendment,  promoting  the  altruistic  service  of  man- 
kind in  carrying  out  the  beneficent  principles  of  the  second 
table  of  the  moral  law;  this  being  attempted  upon  the 
unique  vantage  ground  of  a  free  pardon  for  all  past  omis- 
sions of  duty  to  God  and  man,  in  virtue  of  which  the  peni- 
tent begins  his  life  over  again,  as  a  new  man  actuated  by 
motives  of  love  to  God  and  man. 

The  human  conscience  looks  in  vain  to  the  unpitying  eth- 
ics of  natural  religion,  the  relentless  necessity  for  a  laAV  of 
moral  retribution ;  and  no  human  philosophy  dreams  of  a 
deity  to  whom  it  is  a  necessity  to  pardon  the  penitent.  But 
the  love  of  God  is  voiced  in  the  holy  hymns  of  the  Hebrews : 
Like  as  a  father  pitieth  his  children,  so  the  Everlasting 
Father  pities  those  who  can  but  cry  incoherently,  heeding 
their  inarticulate  wants.^  ''As  one  whom  his  mother  com- 
f orteth  will  I  comfort  you, "  is  in  the  book  of  the  prophets  -^ 

^Psalm  103:  13. 
^Isaiah  6G:  13. 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST.  267 

and  no  mother's  love  is  more  tender  than  that  expressed  in 
the  Gospels.  "The  Father  himself  loveth  you."^  The 
method  of  the  divine  mercy,  in  the  Christian  scheme,  is 
revealed  in  the  Lamb  of  God,  which  taketh  away  the  sins 
of  the  world, —  how,  the  philosophy  of  the  atonement,  we 
need  not  ask :  that  "God  so  loved  the  world  that  he  gave  his 
only  begotten  son,  that  whosoever  believeth  on  him  should 
not  perish  bnt  have  eternal  life,"- — that  Christ  is  in  som.e 
proper  sense  the  expression  of  God 's  love  and  mercy  to  man- 
kind, all  Christians  are  agree.  If  we  speak  of  Christianity 
as  historically  distinguished  from  other  systems  of  belief, 
the  Christian  world,  as  such,  has  believed  that  God's  love 
is  in  Christ,  by  the  Incarnation,  for  man's  redemption; 
when  we  consider  the  power  of  Christian  ideas  to  reno- 
vate society,  this  is  to  be  taken  into  account  as  a  fact  — 
the  common  belief  in  a  scheme  for  man's  moral  redemp- 
tion through  the  love  of  God  in  Christ.  Historically,  it  is 
the  Christian  concept  that  the  moral  attributes  of  God  are 
best  apprehended  in  Christ  —  the  personal  love  of  a  per- 
sonal God  to  those  made  in  his  moral  image, —  the  divine 
friendship  as  a  factor  in  human  life,  underlying  all  Chris- 
tian civilization.  Passing  over  those  incidents  which  relate 
to  the  lowly  condition  of  Jesus  the  Christ  —  as  a  child  seek- 
ing the  knowledge  of  a  trade,  as  a  child  obedient,  listening 
to  the  prompting  of  the  inner  life,  as  to  his  personal  charac- 
ter and  purposes  living  to  God  and  devoted  to  man,  sup- 
porting his  mother  out  of  his  own  earnings  as  a  working 
mechanic,  as  a  philosopher  exercising  vfonderful  self-control 
and  exhibiting  the  content  of  patient  waiting,  as  a  sociolo- 
gist leading  a  life  in  sympathy  with  the  common  people, 
participating  in  the  social  life  of  Pharisees  as  well  as  sin- 
ners,—  his  wonderful  balance  of  character,  his  w^ell- 
rounded  manhood,  his  sinlessness  which  even  Judas  did  not 
arraign  nor  Pilate  challenge,  have  led  the  world  of  unbe- 
lievers, as  well  as  the  devout,  to  testify  to  the  perfection  of 

ijohn  16:  27. 

''John  3:  16,  17.     Hebrews  9:  26.     I  John  2:  1,  2;     3:5. 


268  THE  REMOVAL  OF  MORAL  EVIL. 

his  moral  character,  a  moral  character  never  appreciated  by 
the  Nazarenes,  a  character  standing  out  the  more  stronG^ly 
from  its  contrast  with  his  life  of  hungering  and  thirsting, 
of  ineffable  scorn  by  the  rich  and  proud  and  self-righteous, 
a  character  ideal  in  its  devotement  to  the  service  of  others, 
a  character  notable  in  that  age  and  an  example  to  all  ages; 
he  came  unto  his  own  and  his  own  received  him  not,  he 
finally  clashed  with  the  high  priests  of  his  people,  and  his 
symbolic  death,  as  if  that  of  the  paschal  lamb,  to  him  seemed 
fitting.  "He  ought,"  he  said,^  "to  have  suffered  according 
to  the  Scriptures. ' '  And  whatever  this  all  meant  in  suffer- 
ing and  sacrifice,  it  was  interpreted  in  the  early  as  it  has 
been  in  the  late  Christian  symbols  as  being  the  loving  act  of 
a  divine  self-sacrifice.  It  is  this  that  is  unique  in  the 
world's  thought.  Neither  Brahma,  Buddha,  the  Confucian 
sages  or  the  Heaven  they  ceremonially  worship,  nor  the 
God  of  Islam,  have  been  represented  as  engaging  in  an  act 
of  supreme  self-renunciation  and  such  self-sacrifice  as  that 
depicted  in  the  Gospels  for  the  sake  of  others.^  It  is  this 
belief  in  a  scheme  of  redemption  through  the  self-sacrificing 
love  of  God  in  Christ,  which  has  turned  the  tide  of  human 
Avretchedness,  and  created  a  new  era  for  mankind. 

If  it  be  true  that  the  genealogy  of  the  ideas  of  humanity 
answers  to  the  epochs  of  actual  history,^  then  the  age  which 
marked  the  beginning  of  this  exhibition  of  divine  love  to 
man  is  suitably  set  apart  from  all  other  epochs.  A  hun- 
dred thousand  years  from  now,  the  historian,  in  looking 
back  to  trace  the  story  of  the  moral  evolution  of  mankind, 
will  mark  the  Christian  era  as  the  dawn  of  an  age  when  a 
new  ideal  of  moral  character  —  of  supreme  love  to  God  and 
unselfish  love  to  man  —  became  a  power  in  the  earth  chang- 
ing domestic  customs,   social  institutes,   and  the  laws  of 

^Luke  24:  2G. 

='The  self-sacrifice  of  the  world's  religious  ascetics  has  not  been 
for  others. 
'Bunsen's  God  in  History,  Vol.  I,  p.  28. 


AID  OF  THE  DIVINE  SPIRIT.  269 

ancient  realms.^  The  self-sacrificing-  imitation  of  this 
divine  love,-  toward  all  men,  is  unceasingly  set  forth  in 
the  New  Testament  as  life's  highest  ideal  in  moral  charac- 
ter, in  the  attempt  of  every  disciple,  in  his  measure,  to 
reproduce  upon  the  earth  the  character  of  Jesus  Christ. 

This  is  wrought  out  through  practical  penitence  on  the 
part  of  every  beneficiary  of  the  divine  mercy, — the  forma- 
tion of  a  new  purpose  to  live  by  the  divine  help  in  the 
obedience  to  the  law  of  love  to  God  and  love  to  man. 
"With  marvellous  perception  in  a  dark  age,  Gautama  saw 
that  salvation  must  depend  on  a  change  in  the  man's  inte- 
rior life :  self-denial  as  to  worldly  wealth,  purity,  self-con- 
trol, integrity,  rendering  good  for  evil,  earnest  moral  self- 
culture,  charit}^  and  love  to  others.^  The  change  of  pur- 
pose, however,  introduced  by  Christianity  not  only  con- 
templated all  the  relations  between  man  and  man  as  based 
upon  the  Golden  Rule,  but  made  first  the  rule  of  supreme 
devotion  to  God  —  the  God  of  Love,  the  Moral  Governor 
of  the  universe  Avhose  very  existence  finds  no  place  in  Bud- 
dhism. Gautama  recognized  no  Divine  Helper  in  man's 
attempt  to  lead  a  changed  life,  while,  in  its  very  theory, 
Christianity  claims  that  a  man's  moral  reformation  will  be 

'"Christianity  has  been  tlie  main  source  of  the  moral  develop- 
ment of  Europe,  .  .  .  not  so  much  by  the  inculcation  of  a 
system  of  ethics,  however  pure,  as  by  the  assimilating  and 
attracting  influence  of  a  perfect  ideal.  The  moral  progress  of 
mankind  can  never  cease  to  be  distinctively  and  intensely  Chris- 
tian as  long  as  it  consists  in  a  gradual  approximation  to  the 
character  of  the  Christian  Founder.  There  is  indeed  nothing 
more  wonderful  in  the  history  of  the  human  race  than  the  way 
in  which  this  ideal  has  traversed  the  lapse  of  ages,  acquiring  a 
new  strength  and  beauty  with  each  advance  of  civilization  and 
infusing  its  beneficent  influence  into  every  sphere  of  thought  and 
action." — Lecky's  Rationalism  in  Europe,  Vol.  I,  p.  312. 

^"It  was  oneness  with  God  in  spirit,  which  Jesus  announced  as 
the  controlling  principle  of  the  religious  life." — Professor  Toy, 
Judaism  and  Christianity,  p.  418. 

='Monier-WiIliams,  Buddhism,  p.  551.  Rhys  Davids,  Buddhism, 
p.  40. 


270  THE  REMOVAL  OF  MORAL  EVIL. 

successful  only  through  the  constant  energizing  aid  of  the 
Divine  Spirit,  which  is 'an  essential  factor  to  be  habitually 
counted  on  in  the  scheme  for  the  moral  redemption  of  the 
world.^  To  renew  individuals  is  the  way  to  renew  society : 
last  and  first,  this  was  the  primal  idea  of  Jesus, —  this  once 
wrought,  all  else  would  follow,  changing  society,  root  and 
branch.  To  renew  the  individual,  the  man  not  only  needs 
to  purpose  the  same  thing  with  God,  but  to  have  his  past 
and  present  failures  wiped  out  by  divine  mercy;  since  his 
present  attempt  to  obey  the  moral  law  is  good  only  for 
itself  and  in  nowise  affects  his  accumulated  disobedience, 
but  if  his  moral  imperfections  are  pardoned  outright  he 
starts  upon  his  new  course  without  handicap, —  attempting 
good  works  from  unselfish  love  to  God  and  man  rather  than 
from  a  desire  to  win  moral  merit ;  according  to  the  Christian 
books,  therefore,  the  penitent  is  through  the  divine  mercy 
treated  as  if  without  moral  blame. 

In  Islam  the  divine  compassion  is  made  prominent;-  but 

^Dr.  James  Gilmour,  who  lived  among  the  Northern  Buddhists 
more  than  twenty  years,  encountering  great  numbers  by  an  itin- 
erating medical  mission,  reached  the  conclusion  {Among  the 
Mongols,  pp.  191-197)  that  the  people  of  the  country  make  no 
claim  that  their  system  produces  holiness  of  life,  or  even  ordi- 
nary purity;  although  the  priests  are  constantly  consulted  as  to 
days  and  deeds,  and  religious  rites  are  constantly  observed  (pp. 
210-213).  "Well-informed  persons,"  he  says,  "who  are  really 
desirous  of  making  spiritual  advancement,  discern  the  bearing 
of  the  merit  system.  It  tends  to  militate  against  the  renewal  of 
the  moral  nature;  so  that,  if  they  become  convinced  that  Western 
Christianity  is  helpful  to  people  morally,  as  the  Western  medicine 
helps  them  physically,  they  will  accept  it." 

-When  Abuzer  died  upon  a  pillow  of  sand  in  the  desert,  he  was 
asked  where  was  his  pain:  "For  my  sins,"  he  answered.  "What 
do  you  want?"  "The  mercy  of  God." — Mohammed,  by  James 
Lyman  Merrick,  p.  3G6.     Boston,  1850. 

It  was  said  to  Mohammed:  "You,  also,  0  Prophet!  will  you  not 
enter  into  paradise,  except  by  God's  compassion?"  The  Prophet 
put  his  hand  on  his  head,  and  replied:  "I  shall  not  enter,  except 
God  cover  me  with  his  mercy."  This  he  said  thrice. — Mishcat  ul 
Masahih  (Eug.  tl.),  I,  p.  280.     Cited  in  BiNe  and  Islam. 


MOSLEM   IDEA  OF  RENEWAL.  271 

it  is  confusing  to  one's  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  since  it  is 
not  connected  with  a  radical  change  of  character  in  the 
devotee.  There  is  no  doubt  on  this  point,  as  to  the  general 
impression  made  by  the  Koran  in  its  requirements  through- 
out; although  the  Prophet  recognized  the  principle  which 
he  so  little  insisted  upon, — "Those  who  ask  forgiveness  for 
their  sins  and  do  not  persevere  in  what  they  did,  the  while 
they  know, —  these  have  their  reward."^  The  Prophet's 
leading  thought  was  that  of  opposition  to  idolatry :  and  he 
left  it  this  way,  as  to  the  great  weight  of  his  teaching.  To 
affirm  God's  unity,  and  to  accept  his  prophet  —  this  or  the 
sword  —  required   no  change   of  character.-     Nor  is   God 

^Sura  III:  129,  130.  A  theologian  building  upon  isolated  texts 
rather  than  the  tenor  of  them  all,  might  deduce  the  doctrine  of 
i-epentance  from  this  passage.  The  trend,  however,  of  the 
Koranic  teaching  is  to  this  effect: — sin  calls  for  punishment  not 
reform;  future  suffering  will  wipe  it  out  in  any  event,  as  to  the 
Mussulman. —  Dwight,  pp.  G5,  66. 

^Esaas  Effendi,  cited  in  Dwight's  Constantmople,  p.  57,  speaks 
of  one's  acceptance  of  the  creed  as  an  act  of  faith,  fixing  in  his 
heart  and  proclaiming  God's  unity  and  his  belief  in  the  Prophet: 
hy  that  act  he  becomes  submitted  (Muslim),  and  has  found 
Divine  Grace.  If  the  "submission"  is  to  man,  the  case  is  differ- 
ent. With  the  sword  at  one's  throat,  as  it  is  in  Africa  to-day, 
it  is  no  time  to  discuss  dogmas  or  balance  propositions.  Tide 
Chapter  V,  pp.  23S,  239,  supra.  If,  however,  as  it  often  may  be, 
in  the  Moslem  training  of  youth  age  after  age,  the  submission 
is  voluntarily  made  by  the  devotee,  as  his  own  deliberate  choice 
in  accepting  the  moral  purpose  of  God  as  his  own,  this  would  be 
analogous  to  the  Christian  attitude  in  "conversion."  No  act  of 
faith  is,  however,  implied  unless  through  individual  choice. 
That  it  is  exercised  by  some  is  indicated  by  what  was  said 
supra,  pp.  276-8A,  286.  And  if  the  creed  acceptance  carries  with 
it  no  change  of  character,  has  it  not  been  true  of  vast  bodies  in 
Christendom  that  unregenerate  men  have  been  baptized  as  Chris- 
tians? The  Biblical  texts,  however,  give  no  countenance  to  their 
enrollment,  insisting  rather  upon  a  changed  spiritual  life  as  the 
test.  The  Scriptures,  to  be  like  the  Koran,  would  have  to  place 
the  emphasis  upon  certain  outward  rites. 


272  THE  REMOVAL  OF  MORAL  EVIL. 

emphatically  set  forth  in  his  love  as  man's  energizing  helper 
in  self-conquest.^ 

The  Christian  books,  however,  not  only  place  great  stress 
upon  salvation  as  wrought  out  in  the  individual  character 
but  upon  the  efficient  reinforcement  of  man 's  will-power  by 
divine  energy, —  man's  will  and  God's  will  coming  into 
accord:  as  in  telegraphy  the  magnetic  poles  must  be  so 
related  to  each  other  as  to  favor  the  current.  With  misad- 
justment  of  the  human  will,  it  is  impossible  for  God  to  help 
man  morally.  When  man's  will  harmonizes  with  the- 
divine,  it  is  well  with  the  world.  To  the  penitent,  in  the 
Christian  concept,  the  divine  mercy  not  only  pardons  but 
extends  moral  aid  through  a  divine  indwelling.-  It  is  this 
which  Professor  Drummond  referred  to,  in  illustration  of 
the  point  that  the  spiritual  life  of  man  is  aided  by  the  divine 
power  :^ — 

'Yet  the  idea  was  not  wholly  foreign.  Sura  XXIV,  21.  "But 
for  God's  grace  upon  you  and  his  mercy,  not  one  of  you  would  be- 
forever  pure."  Were  the  trend  of  the  Koranic  texts  in  accord, 
with  this,  it  might  be  said  that  the  prophet  set  forth  a  doctrine 
analogous  to  the  Christian  conception  of  the  work  of  the  Holy^ 
Spirit. 

Note  by  Dk.  D.  B.  Macdonald. — Points  in  this  paragraph  can 
be  emphasized.  The  element  in  Christianity  which  Mohammed 
failed  to  grasp  was  the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  I  have  some- 
times wondered  whether  the  Christian  influence  upon  him  was  of" 
a  sect  in  which  that  doctrine  had  little  place.  "The  Lord  and 
Giver  of  Life"  he  did  not  know.  But  later  mysticism  tried  to 
make  up. 

=John  14:  23.  Rev.  3:  20.  I  John  2:  24;  4:  16.  II  Cor.  6:  16. 
I  Cor.  3:  16.     Phil.  2:  13.     I  Cor.  15:  10.     Heb.  13:  21. 

"In  all  my  study  and  experience  in  India,  the  land  of  my  birth 
and  lifework,  I  have  not  found  in  Hindu  thought,  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  Spirit  of  God  whose  supreme 
title  is  'the  Holy,'  whose  special  function  is  to  make  men  holy, 
who  makes  both  the  bodies  and  souls  of  men  his  temple,  that  he 
may  apply  to  them  the  things  of  Christ  and  make  them  holy." — 
The  Rev.  R.  A.  Hume,  D.  D.;  paper  at  the  Parliament  of  Reli-- 
gions,  Chicago,  1893. 

^Natural  Law,  p.  267. 


THE  IDEA  OF  DIVINE  AID  AS  A  SOCIAL  POWER.  273 

"Whatever  amount  of  power  an  organism  expends  in  any 
shape  is  the  correlate  and  equivolent  of  a  power  that  was 
taken  into  it  from  without.  .  .  ,  Each  portion  of  mechan- 
ical or  other  energy  which  an  organism  exerts  implies  the 
transformation  of  as  much  organic  matter  as  contained  this 
energy  in  a  latent  state.  ...  No  such  transformation  of 
organic  matter  can  take  place  without  the  energy  being  in 
one  shape  or  other  manifested."^ 

To  the  self-contending,  conscious  of  his  high  relationship 
to  God,  a  new  power  comes  sweeping  in,  with  what  Chalmers 
called  "the  expulsive  power  of  a  new  affection,"  to  cleanse 
and  renew  the  soul,^ — a  divinely  enforced  law  of  love  to 
control  the  passions,  to  regulate  life,  to  transform  the  earth 
to  the  likeness  of  the  heavenly  city ;  so  final  moral  salvation 
is  wrought  through  a  mental  change  by  character-forming- 
in  this  life.  The  Scriptures  in  a  large  way  represent  Jesus 
Christ  as  the  Life-giver,  imparting  his  own  energy  to  those 
who  receive  him,  breathing  into  them  new  life,  that  they 
may  live  Christ-like  lives  through  him. 

Instead  of  a  series  of  transmigratory  experiences  and 
final  absorption  in  Brahma,  the  individual,  in  the  Christian 
scheme,  is  here  and  now  at  one  with  God  in  affections  and 
purpose,  and  spiritually  united  to  him.  The  Christian 
Scriptures  call  the  disciples  not  servants  but  friends,  and 
the  relation  between  God  and  his  people  is  represented  as 
that  of  Bridegroom  and  Bride.  It  is  this  that  satisfies  one's 
consciousness ;  he  who  knows  what  Christianity  has  wrought 
for  him  in  his  OAvn  interior  life  becomes  a  good  witness,  who 
tells  what  he  knows  and  cannot  be  broken  down.  In  esti- 
mating -what  Christianity  has  achieved.  Christian  conscious- 
ness admits  of  no  appeal  from  its  testimony :  one  who  knows 
that  he  has  new  life  and  acts  from  new  motives,  that  a 
mighty  change  has  taken  place  within,  that  he  sees  what  he 
was  once  blind  to,  that  he  has  come  into  a  new  and  surpris- 

^Spencer's  Principles  of  Biology,  pp.  57,  5S.     London,  1864. 
-I  John  3:  3.     Every  one  that  hath  this  hope  set  on  him  puri- 
fieth  himself,  even  as  He  is  pure. 

18 


274  THE  REMOVAL  OF  MOR.VL  EVIL. 

ing  relation  to  God, —  he  is  a  moral  power  among  men. 
Some  of  the  coolest-headed,  the  ablest,  the  best  men  in 
Christendom  know  this;  they  are  not  more  sure  of  their 
own  being  than  they  are  sure  of  the  moral  effect  of  Chris- 
tianity upon  their  own  characters  and  lives.  "We  speak 
that  we  do  know,  and  testify  that  we  have  seen."^  "Sup- 
pose, ' '  in  the  words  of  one  fitly  called  the  Golden-mouth  of 
the  modern  age,  ' '  suppose  I  am  told  that  Naples  is  not,  but 
the  memory  of  the  vision  of  its  beauty  none  other  than  a 
dream,  that  Venice,  lying  anchored  at  her  lagoons,  and 
Mont  Blanc  raising  its  dome  to  the  sky  as  if  it  were  the 
Great  White  Throne  itself,  are  naught,  shall  I  disbelieve 
what  my  own  eyes  have  seen?  So  men  who  have  not  been 
able  to  find  God  tell  me  that  there  is  no  God.  But  I  put 
over  against  the  negative  that  is  in  them  the  positive  that 
is  in  me,  the  revelation  which  this  soul  of  mine,  illumined 
by  the  Spirit  of  God,  has  had  of  Him  and  I  stand  invinci- 
ble in  my  faith  upon  Him.  You  may  reason  the  blue  of 
the  heaven  that  is  above  us,  you  may  untwist  the  strands  of 
the  ray  of  light  as  it  comes  to  us  from  above,  and  prove  it 
to  be  but  darkness,  you  may  dispute  that  there  is  any  air  to 
breathe,  but  not  till  then  may  you  wrest  from  me  the  knowl- 
edge that  has  been  vouchsafed  me  of  this  God  of  love  and 
truth.  Against  this  knowledge  the  shaft  of  argument  can- 
not prevail,  but  falls  shattered  like  the  lance  before  the 
unyielding  bronze.  "- 

VII. 

THE   TIME  ELEMENT   IN   FORMING  RACLVL   TENDENCIES   IN 
ETHICS. 

To  inquire  whether  the  concepts  embodied  in  the  Chris- 
tian books  are  true  is  far  from  the  present  point :  the  sole 
question  is  whether  these  ideas,  as  compared  with  non- 
Christian,  are  lilcely  to  give  leadership  in  the  world-wide 

^I   John   3:  11.     Romans   8:  16.     I   John   5:  10.     II   Cor.   1:  22; 
5:  5.     Eph.  1:  13.     Gal.  4:  6. 
^'The  late  Richard  Salter  Storrs,  LL.  D. 


RACIAL   TENDENCIES.  275 

rivalry  of  races  and  religions  in  the  attempt  to  rid  the  world 
of  moral  evil.  For  a  period  varying,  say,  from  forty  to  a 
hundred  and  tv.-enty  generations  of  men,  the  ethical  princi- 
ples and  philosophical  theories  of  the  great  racial  stocks 
have  been  outworking  for  the  formation  of  national  char- 
acter,—  giving  ceaseless  expression  to  certain  ideas  of  moral 
inter-relation  between  man  and  man  for  the  conduct  of  life : 
which  now,  of  these  races  and  religions  is  most  likely  to 
gain  the  moral  leadership  of  the  world  through  inherent 
fitness?     RevicAv  in  brief  the  contracts  presented: — 

(1)  Brahmanism,  the  fountain  of  JModern  Hinduism,  for 
four  score  generations  has  trained  the  youth  of  India  to 
believe  that  one's  own  personality,  as  apart  from  God,  is 
an  illusion,  that  man  is  of  the  same  identity  with  the  imper- 
sonal first  cause  or  Arranger  of  all  things,  that  worship  is 
to  be  prescribed  by  Brahmans  as  the  highest  exponent  of 
Brahm,  that  sin  is  but  the  neglect  of  rites,  that  there  is 
no  moral  government  over  men  save  an  impersonal  law 
of  moral  retribution  whose  demands  are  satisfied  through 
ceremonial  merit  seeking,  and  that  one's  final  release  from 
evil  is  possible  only  through  the  gradual  perfection  of  life 
after  many  generations  of  rebirth  —  perhaps  millions  of 
them, —  when  one  will  be  reabsorbed  in  the  Brahm. 

(2)  Buddhism  has  trained  the  most  thoughtful  youth, 
throughout  vast  areas  of  Asia,  for  more  than  seventy  gener- 
ations, that  there  is  no  God;  and  no  soul  of  man,  and  no 
continuity  of  individual  life  after  death ;  and  that  the  prac- 
tice in  self-strength  of  certain  wholesome  moralities  com- 
prises the  only  wisdom,  and  that,  in  these,  final  perfection 
is  to  be  found  only  in  a  secluded  life,  separated  from  domes- 
tie  and  social  relations;  and  that  one's  individual  virtues 
and  vices  affect  the  world,  perhaps  for  millions  of  genera- 
tions, onl}^  through  their  reappearance,  by  the  embodiment 
of  moral  antecedents  in  a  thing  or  a  sentient  being  not 
identical  with  one's  present  personality  but  mysteriously 
related  to  it  through  an  impersonal  identity  of  moral  action. 

(3)  Confucianism  has  gathered  up  the  earliest  instruc- 


276  THE  TIME  ELEMENT. 

tions  of  the  Chinese  sages,  and  held  a  great  people  to  their 
ancestral  concepts  and  usages,  this  being  the  racial  ideal 
for  perhaps  thirty-five  hundred  A'ears;  with  no  popular 
knowledge  of  God,  and  no  sense  of  moral  responsibility  to 
him  for  obedience  to  the  law  of  love  to  God  and  man,  and 
no  popular  religious  custom  save  that  relating  to  ancestral 
worship  and  reverence  for  the  national  sages. 

(4)  Islam,  exalting  God  as  against  idolatry,  represents 
him  as  adequately  served  by  ablution,  reciting  a  creed,  a 
fast,  and  a  pilgrimage,  on  the  part  of  the  natural  man  with- 
out moral  change  of  purpose, —  this  at  least  in  popular  use 
and  apprehension ;  the  creed,  however,  expressing,  on  the 
part  of  some,  a  religious  faith,  devout  dependence  on  God, 
and  almsgiving  remem^brance  of  the  Sloslem  poor. 

(5)  Christianity  has  taught,  throughout  all  its  genera- 
tions, the  personal  moral  responsibility  of  every  man  imme- 
diately to  a  personal  God,  (i)  who  can  be  honored  only 
through  a  man's  obedience  to  the  law  of  supreme  love  to 
his  Heavenly  Father,  and  perfect  love  to  all  men  as  equally 
the  children  of  God,  (ii)  who  holds  all  men  amenable  to 
this  moral  law  of  love  upon  pain  of  ineffable  spiritual  loss, 
(iii)  who  hates  disobedience  to  the  law  of  love  with  a  per- 
fect hatred,  (iv)  who  yet  devotes  himself  in  self-sacrifice  for 
the  moral  salvation  of  the  penitent,  (v)  and  who  aids  the 
penitent  through  spiritual  reinforcement  in  his  attempt  to 
keep  the  law  of  love, —  the  penitent  being  so  renewed  in  tem- 
per and  spirit,  becoming  so  at  one  with  God  in  moral  intent, 
as  to  make  it  his  life  purpose  to  honor  God  through  promot- 
ing love  as  the  rule  for  the  conduct  of  life  among  all  men. 

It  is  not  to  the  question,  whether  the  five  life  theories  here 
alluded  to  have  entered  wholly  into  the  souls  of  the  races 
holding  them :  it  is  a  question  of  tendency,  of  type  and  gen- 
eral conformity  to  type.  So  held,  which  is  likely  to  produce 
the  best  racial  stock,  which  will  most  effectively  deal  with 
moral  evil  among  men,  which  will  survive  in  the  struggle 
for  moral  leadership  ? 


RACIAL   TENDENCIES.  277 

Is  it  true  that  Christianity,  as  a  scheme  of  redemption, 
is  unique  and  imapproachable  in  its  attempt  to  rid  the 
world  of  moral  evil?  Has  not  Christianity  so  disciplined 
and  developed  man's  moral  faculties,  as  to  stamp  its  char- 
acter upon  the  racial  stock  that  is  now  in  the  civic,  domestic, 
educational  and  philanthropic  leadership  of  the  world?  Is 
it  too  much  to  say,  that,  if  the  moral  ideas  of  Christian- 
ity will  not  renew  the  world,  there  is  no  other  power  yet 
known  in  man's  moral  evolution  to  do  it?^  Here  are  the 
five  great  religions  or  religious  philosophies  of  the  world: 
look  at  them.  Which,  in  its  inner  structure,  in  its  charac- 
ter-forming power  as  related  to  the  conduct  of  life,  is  most 
likely  to  win  supremacy?  Instead  of  saying,  "By  their 
fruits  ye  shall  know  them, "  it  is  to  be  said,  ' '  By  their  seeds, 
and  by  their  roots,  by  their  cardinal  ideas  and  theories  of 
life  as  related  to  a  progressive  development  of  human  facul- 
ties and  potent  personalities  ye  shall  know  them:"  look  to 
the  law  of  heredity,  let  such  ideas  have  full  sway  for  hun- 
dreds of  generations,  let  the  seeds  and  roots  bear  fruit  after 
their  kind,  and  ye  shall  know  them. 

VIII. 

SOCIAL   EFFECT   OP    THE  IDEA   OF   A   DIVINE  KINGDOM. 

In  contrasting  the  contents  of  the  Christian  and  non- 
Christian  Sacred  Books,  there  is  further  difference, —  relat- 
ing to  the  Divine  Kingdom  in  this  world. 

Long  before  the  Christian  era,  during  a  greater  period 
than  that  since  the  discovery  of  America  till  now,  the  idea 
of  a  divine  kingdom  on  earth,  appeared  in  the  Hebrew  liter- 
ature, at  first  as  rudimentary,  then  unfolding,  and  culmi- 
nating after  some  centuries  in  the  conception  of  a  spiritual 
kingdom  governed  by  the  law  of  love, —  God 's  love  to  man, 

^In  asking  this,  no  question  is  raised  as  to  whether  Christianity 
is  of  divine  origin:  it  is,  for  the  present  inquiry,  but  a  part  of 
man's  unfolding  of  powers  —  no  matter  where  the  ideas  came 
from,  Christianity  has  them. 


278  A   WORLD-WIDE   KINGDOM    OF   LOVE. 

man 's  answering  love,  and  fraternal  love  between  men :  an 
idea  pushed  to  the  fore  through  the  teaching  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  and  of  his  disciples  who  believed  him  to  be  the 
Hebrew  Messiah.  So  in  the  evolution  of  moral  ideas,  it 
came  about  that  the  First  Cause  of  all  things  began  to  be 
apprehended  by  men  as  if  in  personal  relations : —  as  the 
Divine  Father  who  so  loved  the  world  that  through  Christ 
men  should  no  longer  perish  as  the  brutes,  but  have  ever- 
lasting life;^  as  the  Divine  Moral  Governor  to  whom  all 
mankind  —  having  a  natural  susceptibility  for  spiritual 
life  and  power  to  become  the  sons  of  God- —  were  held 
responsible  for  obedience  to  the  law  of  supreme  love  to 
God  and  the  golden  rule  of  love  toward  man ;  as  the  Saviour 
of  men  through  a  scheme  of  redemption  in  which  the  mercy 
of  God  treats  the  penitent  as  if  they  had  not  sinned;  as 
the  Divine  Spirit  informing  and  renewing  man's  nature  in 
its  inner  principles  of  moral  conduct,  then  strengthening, 
comforting,  and  indwelling  —  as  if  man,  renewed  in  the 
temper  and  spirit  of  his  mind,  were  the  temple  of  the  Holy 
One. 

It  is  not  to  the  present  point  to  inquire  whether  these 
ideas  were  well  based,  it  is  pertinent  that  they  were  firmly 
held  by  the  founders  of  what  they  believed  to  be  a  new 
divine  dispensation,  yet  essentially  at  one  with  the  spiritual 
illumination  of  an  epoch  earlier  than  Moses;  these  elemen- 
tary moral  ideas  being  held  by  their  projectors  to  be  a  super- 
natural revelation  made  known  in  Judaic  law  and  history 
and  literature,  a  revelation  supplemented  through  the 
Divine  Mercy  in  Christ  and  the  Divine  Spirit,  as  purposed 
by  Jehovah,  who  had  raised  up  Jesus  from  the  dead,  and 
brought  life  and  immortality  to  light,  that  henceforth  the 
children  of  men  might  become  the  sons  and  daughters  of 
the  Almighty  in  a  Divine  Kingdom  now  and  world  without 
end. 

None  other  than  these  were  the  ideas,  endued  with  the 
power  of  an  endless  life,  that  shook  the  realms  of  paganism, 

^John  3:  16,  17.        ==1  John  1:  12. 


SOCIAL  POWER  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  CONCEPT.  279 

and  gave  new  hope  to  men  who  were  tired  of  Babylonian, 
Assyrian,  and  Egyptian  theology,  tired  of  the  Greeks  and 
very  tired  of  the  typical  Romans :  and  these  were  the  very 
ideas  that  became  of  such  force  in  the  daily  life  of  the 
Eoman  empire  that  within  ten  generations  Christianity 
mounted  the  throne  of  the  C«sars. 

No  facts  in  history  are  better  established  than  these  basal 
facts  of  the  origin  of  Christianity  as  the  kingdom  of  love 
among  men,  the  law  of  love  as  the  central  point  and  power. 

One  man  is  no  man,  said  Aristotle.  An  inborn  tie  fastens 
every  man  to  his  race :  this  is  the  teaching  of  Christianity 
and  of  social  science.  It  is  a  truth  as  broad  as  the  realm  of 
mankind.  Upon  it  is  based  the  possibility  of  a  universal 
reign  of  the  law  of  love,  the  Divine  Kingdom  in  this  world. 

World-wide  sway  has  never  been  the  expectation  of 
Brahmans,  Buddhists,  or  Confucianists,  nor  have  they 
engaged  in  activities  to  promote  such  a  consummation. 
Mohammed  claimed  at  first  to  be  the  Prophet  of  Arabia, 
and  adapted  his  teachings  to  that  end, —  by  the  width  of 
the  world  a  different  plan  from  that  adopted  by  Jesus  of 
Nazareth.  Had  Jesus  set  out  to  reform  the  Jewish  religion 
alone,  and  so  shaped  his  course  as  to  be  a  Jew  instead  of  the 
Son  of  Man,  and  so  given  instruction  of  little  pertinence 
outside  of  Judea,  he  would  in  this  have  done  what  Moham- 
med did  in  Arabia.  But  Christianity  has  from  the  begin- 
ning planned  for  universal  dominion  through  the  kingdom 
of  love.  There  are,  saj^s  the  Master,  only  two  command- 
ments. Nor  is  there  any  Christian  obligation  outside  the 
authority,  the  sanctions,  the  logical  antecedents  and  infer- 
ences, and  the  coordinate  truths,  that  pertain  to  love  to 
God  and  love  to  men :  love  is  a  unit,  with  these  two  objects 
of  affection ;  nor  is  there  an  iota  of  religion  in  anything 
else.  This  fundamental  Moral  Law  is  adapted  to  perfect 
human  society ;  it  is  good  for  all  ages  and  all  worlds.  Those 
actuated  by  Christian  principle  are  held  by  their  charter, 
for  life's  main  business,  to  promote  the  moral  government  of 


280  A   WORLD-WIDE   KINGDOM    OF   LOVE, 

God  among  men.  Love  as  an  energy  in  human  history, 
extending  its  domain,  redeeming  men  from  the  power  of  an 
evil  life,  consecrating  new  generations  of  disciples  to  an 
unselfish  service, —  this  has  been  the  chief  factor  in  the 
moral  evolution  of  Christendom;  the  progressive  acknowl- 
edgment of  human  rights,  the  equality  of  men,  the  triumphs 
of  justice  and  right, —  have  outsprung  from  the  Moral  Law. 
Marks  of  the  underlying  divine  government  of  the  world 
are  easily  discernible  in  history;  like  the  watermark  in 
paper  which  indicates  the  maker,  whatever  be  the  ink 
marks  on  the  paper  itself. 

Christianity  looks  upon  the  human  race  as  a  unit,  under 
one  moral  government,  with  one  Father.  To  bring  men 
into  a  common  brotherhood  and  secure  mutual  cooperation, 
is  to  create  a  new  social  world;  nor  is  any  society  progres- 
sive —  in  a  world-wide  sense  —  that  is  content  with  less. 

Far  is  all  this  from  the  thought  of  Celsus,  who  scoffed  at 
the  idea  that  Greeks  and  barbarians  should  ever  unite  in 
one  doctrine.  Far  is  all  this  from  the  caste  system  of  the 
Hindus.  Far  is  all  this  from  the  Buddhistic  ideal  of 
Obliterating  man  as  a  social  being.^  Far  is  all  this  from 
the  brotherly  love  of  Islam  limited  to  the  circle  of  the 
faith.2  Yet  the  trend  of  Christianity  is  toward  less  of  the- 
ology and  more  of  fraternity,  the  cultivation  of  the  loving 
power  to  change  the  lives  of  men  by  meeting  their  ethical 
wants.  Bishop  Patteson  did  not  go  to  the  South  Seas  to  tell 
the  cannibals  that  their  course  was  wrong.  ''I  teach,"  he 
said,  ' '  positive  truth,  and  trust  that  this  truth  will  lead  them 
to  abandon  the  evil."  Paton,  who  saw  fourteen  thousand 
cannibals  Christianized,  said  that,  in  speaking  to  them,  he 
did  not  talk  to  them  much  about  their  wickedness,  but  he 
told  them  of  the  divine  redemption,  and  urged  them  to 

'Monastic  isolation  so  influences  the  common  people  in  Burmah, 
that  even  if  one  is  in  danger  it  is  assumed  that  he  knows  what 
he  is  doing,  so  that  no  one  will  warn  or  help  him  unless  he  asks 
for  it.—  Fielding's  Soul  of  a  People,  pp.  249,  252,  253. 

^Muir's  Life  of  Mahomet,  LV,  p.  321. 


SOCIAL  POWER  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  CONCEPT.  281 

leave  their  sins  and  to  live  for  God, —  and  this  they  did. 
The  Governor  of  Bourbon  said  to  the  first  missionaries,  that 
the  people  of  Madagascar  were  mere  brutes,  that  it  was 
impossible  to  make  them  Christians;  yet  there  are  to-day 
more  than  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  these  once  brutal  men, 
whose  consciences  have  been  developed  and  trained  by 
Christianity,  who  now  gather  statedly  for  Christian  worship 
and  for  further  instruction  in  moral  truth.  There  are 
Christian  audiences  of  six  hundred  to  a  thousand  people. 
^'If  I  could,"  said  a  petty  thief  among  them,  "I  would 
restore  fourfold,  but  I  have  not  got  the  m.oney.  I  can 
restore  twofold  and  here  it  is."  That  is  the  way  to  change 
the  face  of  society.  In  China,  a  manufacturer  of  rice 
whiskey  journeyed  twenty-three  miles  to  attend  a  Chris- 
tian service  at  Fukui.  Having  borrowed  Doctor  Mar- 
tin's Evidences  of  Christianity,  he  then  destroyed  his  dis- 
tillery and  went  to  farming.  A  well-to-do  and  reputa- 
ble Ningpo  Chinaman  astonished  a  missionary  by  appear- 
ing for  instruction  in  Christianity.  "Have  you  heard 
the  Gospel  before?"  "No,  but  I  have  seen  it.  One  of 
my  neighbors  v/as  a  terror.  When  angry  he  would  curse 
for  two  d-ays  and  nights.  He  was  a  wild  beast,  and  he  was 
a  bad  opium  smoker.  When  he  became  a  Christian,  he  was 
gentle,  moral,  not  soon  angry,  and  he  left  off  opium. "  "Is 
that  woman  an  angel?"  asked  the  baffled  woman  in  the 
Turkish  bath  at  Marash,  when,  in  malice,  she  tried  in  vain 
to  ruffle  the  spirit  of  a  Christian  at  her  elbow.  Here  is  a 
sociological  experiment  by  which  to  determine  how  the 
peace  of  God  may  be  brought  to  the  earth.  ' '  Every  man, ' ' 
says  Emerson,  "takes  care  that  his  neighbor  shall  not  cheat 
him.  But  a  day  comes  when  he  begins  to  care  that  he  does 
not  cheat  his  neighbor.  Then  all  goes  well.  He  has 
changed  his  market  cart  into  a  chariot  of  the  sun."  This 
is  easy  enough  when  a  man  forms  right  moral  habits  toward 
God  and  man.  "Here  is  your  knife,"  said  a  Protestant 
finder  to  a  Mohammedan  muleteer.  The  reply  was  this : 
"A  Moslem  would  not  have  given  back  such  a  good  knife 


282  A   WORLD-WIDE   KINGDOM    OF   LOVE. 

as  that. ' '  And  down  in  the  Garenganze  country  Mr.  Swan 
overheard  the  men  in  the  traveling  company  say:  "Look 
at  those  boys  in  Bailundu.  They  will  not  keep  a  needle,  if 
they  find  one,  without  trying  to  find  the  owner.  Jehovah 
taught  them  that."  When  Mr.  Nott,  at  Tahiti,  preached 
to  the  new  converts  on  theft,  they  brought  him  next  morn- 
ing the  goods  they  had  been  stealing  for  years.  This  is  the 
kind  of  religion  to  take  round  the  world;  and,  from  a 
humanitarian  point  of  view,  those  men  are  hn  good  business 
who  teach  Turkey  and  Africa  and  the  South  Seas  to  ex- 
change their  burden  packs  for  the  "chariots  of  the  sun." 
The  changed  life,  shining  out  amid  the  surrounding  dark- 
ness, is  a  "gospel  in  the  largest  capitals,  which  all  can 
read:"  so  testifies  the  venerable  Paton,  who  conducted  the 
sociological  experiment  in  the  Southern  Seas.  Nations 
which  hold  the  great  secret  of  the  power  to  produce  social 
morality,  which  know  how  to  enlighten  the  human  con- 
science, which  are  entrusted  with  carrying  out  God's  plan 
for  the  redemption  of  mankind, —  these  are  the  progressive 
nations  with  a  future  before  them,  nations  that  are  but  the 
provinces  of  the  Kingdom  of  Love. 

The  children  of  the  kingdom  are  read  and  known  by 
their  neighbors.  Here  is  a  letter  from  the  Rt.  Rev.  Edward 
Ralph  Johnson,  late  Bishop  of  Calcutta,^  who  had  oppor- 
tunity to  observe  the  effect  of  Christianity  upon  the  natives 
during  some  twenty  years,  throughout  an  extent  of  country 
fifteen  hundred  miles  by  five  hundred,  among  a  population 
of  thirty  millions,  there  being  one  hundred  and  eighteen 
missionaries,  including  native  clergy,  and  one  hundred  and 
seventy-three  missionary  schools  in  his  diocese,  so  that  the 
testimony  is  based  upon  fullness  of  knowledge : — 

' '  I  have  your  letter  asking  about  the  improvement  in  the 
Christians  of  the  second  and  third  generations.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  whatever  upon  the  point.  As  you  go  through 
a  mission  village,  j'ou  can  tell  at  once,  by  the  appearance  of 
the  people,  who  are  the  Christians;  their  countenances  tell 

Personal  letter  of  May  7,  1S94. 


SOCIAL  POWER  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  CONCEPT.  283 

of  the  brighter  life.  The  Christians  increase  more  rapidly 
than  the  non-Christians,  as  shown  by  the  last  census.  And 
the  government  reports  having  taken  note  of  the  advance 
the  Christian  natives  have  made  in  social  position,  as  com- 
pared with  the  natives  of  other  religions."  "When  people 
become  Christians,"  remarked  a  religious  teacher  twenty 
years  in  India,  "their  physical  condition  is  so  much 
improved,  their  thrift  and  capacity  for  self-help  so  devel- 
oped, that  it  is  noticeable  at  sight.  In  going  to  a  village  I 
do  not  have  to  ask  who  are  Christians,  I  can  pick  them  out 
at  sight.  It  is  true,  in  visiting  hundreds  of  villages,  that 
you  can  see  the  physical  improvement  wrought  by  Chris- 
tianity."  Is  it  a  consciousness  of  the  divine  indwelling,  or 
the  indwelling  of  a  new  purpose,  a  sense  of  citizenship  in 
the  Kingdom  of  Love,  that  illuminates  faces  once  dark  with 
despair?  "I  can  pick  out  the  Christians  as  soon  as  I  see 
them,  whenever  I  go  to  a  new  village  in  India," — so  a 
Telugu  missionary  reports,  having  tried  it  for  a  score  of 
years.  "The  Hindu  of  all  castes,"  says  Dr.  Pentecost, 
"carries  the  low  lines  of  hopelessness  and  despair  in  his 
face.  The  Christian  is  known  by  the  transfiguration  of 
his  face.  You  might  pick  them  out  in  any  place  in  India, 
amongst  any  people.  You  could  tell  them  by  the  lines  in 
their  faces."  All  this  is  discerned  by  the  world's  great 
artists.  They  never  weary  of  experimenting  upon  spiritual 
outlines.  With  acute  discernment  and  matchless  skill  they 
depict  innocence  or  guilt,  fear  or  shame,  hope,  peace,  love, 
by  this  or  that  turn  of  the  eyelid,  the  brow,  the  lips,  the 
contour  of  the  features.  So  true  is  it  that  self-control  and 
self-development  are  artists;  he  who  exercises  himself  in 
guilty  or  in  holy  choices  is  always  modifying  his  own  fea- 
tures. So  true  is  it  that  Christianity  is  beautifying  the 
faces  of  the  young  people  in  every  clime,  and  in  every  quar- 
ter of  the  globe.  And  if  all  tliis  is  but  a  slow  process,  it 
is  of  matchless  might  as  the  generations  advance,  slowly 
changing  the  homes  of  the  world,  renewing  the  face  of  soci- 
ety, and  bringing  in  the  Kingdom  of  God.     All  that  is 


284  THE   KINGDOM   OF   HEAVEN. 

needed  in  this  world-wide  sociological  experiment  is  the 
reeling  off  of  a  few  hundreds  of  years,  and  then  it  will  be 
seen  what  character  has  been  imparted  to  the  racial  stocks 
of  the  world. 

IX. 

THE    KINGDOM    OF      HEAVEN,    OR    FINAL    RELEASE    PROM    SIN. 

Another  point  of  divergence  between  the  Sacred  Books 
of  Christians  and  non-Christians  is  their  concept  of  the 
future  life,  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  Brahmans  and  Bud- 
dhists teach  that  none  can  find  release  from  the  toils  of 
transmigration  until  after  millions  of  generations,  when  the 
perfected  soul  may  be  reabsorbed  in  Brahm^  or  enter  Nir- 
vana.'  As  a  rule,  the  Confucianists  in  China  and  Japan 
do  not  believe  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul;  the  ancient 
sages,  whom  they  have  studied  so  faithfully,  say  almost 
nothing  concerning  a  future  life.^  The  Koran  pictures  the 
heavenly  world  as  the  place  where  one  is  licensed,  as  to  all 
carnal  pleasures,  to  do  what  is  here  forbidden  as  a  test  of 
obedience.*  The  Christian  view  is  alluded  to  only  in  its 
relation  to  its  prospective  influence  upon  the  racial  stock 
trained  in  its  belief  for  many  scores  of  generations. 
''To-day  shalt  thou  be  with  me  in  paradise,"  and  kindred 

^Consult  Mitchell's  Hinduism,  p.  134. 

"When  man  can  lose  consciousness  of  personality  and  say, 
"Aham  Brahma,"  that  is,  "I  am  the  Universal  It,"  then  he  has 
attained  true  wisdom  and  his  true  goal;  he  passes  from  conscious 
existence  into  the  Universal  It. —  Hume,  Parliament  of  Religions, 
II,  1275. 

Wide  Appendix  C,  infra. 

Wide  Edkins'  Religion  of  China,  p.  142.     London,  1878. 

Confucius  ignored  or  denied  the  immortality  of  the  soul. — 
Martin's  Lore  of  Cathay,  p.  17.  The  Taoists  affirm  a  corporeal 
immortality;  the  bodies  of  those  who  are  actuated  by  the  high- 
est reason,  being  etherialized,  but  the  souls  of  others  are  dis- 
solved.—  Lore  of  Cathay,  pp.  182,  193. 

*For  example:  Sura  LVI,  10-35.  Consult  Dwight's  Constan- 
tinople, p.  68. 


FINAL  RELEASE  FROM  MORAL  EVIL.  285 

texts,  have  been  interpreted  to  indicate  that  the  realms  of 
conscious  and  blissful  immortality  are  not  far  away,  and 
that  a  new  career  for  the  unfolding  of  human  powers  is 
at  once  opened  to  him  whose  present  activity  is  transferred 
to  the  heavenly  world.  ' '  The  powers  of  the  world  to  come ' ' 
afford  an  immeasurable  uplift  to  the  human  spirit,  giving 
to  every  thoughtful  man  a  sense  that  his  own  consciousness 
is  related  to  the  divine  energy  that  is  manifest  throughout 
the  material  universe.  Death  is  but  the  change  from  life 
to  life.  When  love  has  had  its  perfect  earthly  work, 
supreme  toward  God,  unselfish  and  self-sacrificing  toward 
man, —  this  spiritual  attribute  gathers  new  force  and  seeks 
new  fields  for  expansion.  It  must  be  so,  unless  intellectual 
confusion  is  the  law  for  governing  the  universe.  Is  not  the 
soul's  immortality  held  to  be  the  very  climax  of  the  cosmic 
process?^  As  a  mere  motive  power  in  the  ethical  world, 
Christianity  depends  upon  "the  immense  importation  it 
makes  from  worlds  of  glory  outside."^ 

X. 

PERMANENT    FORCE    OF    THE    ETHICAL    THEORIES    THAT    PER- 
MEATE CHRISTIAN  LITERATURE. 

If  this  book  were  theological  rather  than  first  and  last 
and  at  every  turn  a  practical  sociological  inquiry,  it  would 
be  easy  to  amplify  the  points  of  difference  between  the  dog- 
matic contents  of  the  Christian  and  non-Christian  books, 
yet  enough  has  been  said  to  illustrate  the  ethical  theories 
which  are  permanent  forces  in  social  life.  In  comparing 
the   world's   thought,    as   expressed   in   the   books   of   the 

'"Immortality  is  not  some  vast,  vague,  all  obliterating  term  of 
being,  into  which  departed  souls  pass  to  be  absorbed  as  rivers 
lose  themselves  in  the  sea  into  which  they  empty.  Immortality 
is  the  projection  of  personal  identity  on  into  the  other  world; 
the  preservation  of  individuality,  in  all  its  varieties  of  intellect, 
toil,  and  aptitude."— The  Rev.  Edward  Abbott,  D.  D. 

^Bushnell's  phrase. 


286  PERMANENT  FORCE  OF  ETHICAL  THEORIES. 

nations,  is  it  not  easy  to  see  that  Christian  literature  is  per- 
meated with  ideas  relating  to  the  divine  love  and  helpful- 
ness, to  conscience,  the  law  of  love,  and  the  coordinate 
truths  most  helpful  to  man;  ideas  made  luminous  that 
appear  dimly,  if  at  all,  in  the  philosophic  and  ethical  sys- 
tems, mythologies  or  theologies  of  the  Assyrians,  Egyptians, 
Greeks,  Komans,  Persians,  Brahmans,  Buddhists,  Taoists, 
Shinto  priests,  Confucianists,  Moslems,  and  fetish  worship- 
ers. Looked  at  as  literature,  is  not  the  Christian  the  fullest 
and  best,  the  most  suggestive  to  the  moral  nature  of  man, 
having  in  it  more  evident  power  to  raise  the  fallen, 
strengthen  the  weak,  inspire  the  strong,  and  better  con- 
forming, as  a  whole,  to  the  reason  of  man  in  his  highest 
development  in  recent  centuries?  Is  there  not  something 
suggestive  of  arrested  development  in  the  moral  evolution  of 
certain  great  races  ?^  When  those  residing  long  in  foreign 
parts  tell  us  that  in  China,  neighborly  acts,  the  giving  of 
cups  of  cold  water,  are  not  common,  unless  merit  can  be 
gained  by  them,  and  that  the  same  acts  are  denied  in  India, 
lest  caste  contamination  result  from  them,  do  we  not  gain 
the  impression  that  certain  great  religions  pertain  to  the 
inide  peoples  of  a  former  age  ? 

Yet  the  childhood  of  the  nations  must  have  been  unspeak- 
ably precious  to  the  All-Father,  who  has  from  the  dawTi  of 
religious  consciousness  upon  the  earth,  looked  with  Infinite 
pity  upon  the  anguished  hearts  of  the  hundreds  of  millions 
in  all  the  millenniums  of  history, —  so  much  of  being  born, 
of  struggling  for  existence,  of  seeking  a  pittance  of  merit 
before  death  should  close  the  scene.  With  what  eagerness 
has  one  generation  after  another  sought  out  new  methods  of 

*"To-day,"  says  Professor  M.  Monier-Williams  (Brahmanism 
and  Hinduism,  pp.  296,  297),  "a  cow,  duly  decorated,  is  brought 
to  the  bedside  of  the  dying  man  in  India;  he  is  made  to  grasp 
the  tail,  under  the  notion  that  by  the  sacred  animal's  assistance 
he  will  be  safely  transported  over  the  Vaitarani,  the  river  of 
death.".  The  cow  is  the  primeval  Aryan  type  of  the  all-yielding 
earth.  We  have  to  do  in  India  with  the  very  earliest  notions  of 
our  race;  the  Brahmanical  priesthood  perpetuating  the  tradition. 


THE  UNITIES  OP  THE  SPIRIT.  287 

merit-earning,  all  ignorant  of  God's  love.  The  records  of 
altruistic  adventure  in  non-Christian  lands  bring  constantly 
to  light  great  numbers  of  individuals  who  call  to  mind  the 
words  of  Esdras, — "They  have  seen  no  prophet,  yet  they 
shall  call  their  sins  to  remembrance  and  acknowledge 
them."  "If,"  says  Bushnell,  "they  were  only  such  as  seek 
after  God  of  their  own  notion,  they  might  be  very  few,  but 
since  God  is  seeking  after  them,  after  all  men  everywhere, 
it  should  not  be  incredible  that  some  are  found  by  him  and 
folded  in  his  fold,  which  they  do  not  so  much  as  know."^ 
Is  it  not,  in  many  respects,  but  an  ungrateful  task  to  study 
the  sacred  books  of  the  nations  in  order  to  note  their  points 
of  difference  ?  It  would  be  a  happier  lot  to  seek  to  discern 
the  unities  of  the  spirit,  and  the  persistent  force  of  certain 
great  philosophical  and  religious  truths  —  .spiritual  intui- 
tions —  that  constantly  appear  in  the  early  religious  litera- 
ture of  all  peoples, —  the  affinities  of  the  religious  systems, 
the  rays  of  that  supernal  light  which  lighteth  every  man 
that  Cometh  into  the  world.- 

'The  Burmese  missionaries  report  persons  who  have  been 
inquiring  after  God  during  many  years.  The  Karens,  without 
idols  or  Buddhist  notions,  have  an  ancient  tradition  of  one  God, 
and  that  he  will  yet  save  them;  so  they  have  been  accustomed 
to  pray:  "If  God  will  save  us,  let  him  save  speedily.  We  can 
endure  these  sufferings  no  longer.  Alas,  where  is  God?"  (The 
Karen  Christian  teacher,  Sanquala.)  These  are  the  people  of 
the  jungle  and  the  mountains, —  once  greatly  oppressed  by  the 
Burmese. 

^Dr.  Hume  gives  a  striking  illustration  of  this,  in  certain 
points  of  likeness  between  Christian  and  Hindu  thought,  which 
even  if  verbal  rather  than  real  —  on  account  of  the  dominating 
pantheistic  philosophy  of  India,  with  its  doctrines  of  "illusion," 
"fatalism,"  and  "transmigration," — yet  show  how  near  together 
those  may  be  who  are  still  so  far  apart:  — 

"Both  Christian  and  Hindu  thought  recognize  an  Infinite  Being 
■with  whom  is  bound  up  man's  rational  and  spiritual  life.  Both 
magnify  the  indwelling  of  this  Infinite  Being  in  every  part  of 
the  universe.  Both  teach  that  this  great  Being  is  ever  revealing 
itself;  that  the  universe  is  a  unit,  and  that  all  things  come  under 
the  universal  laws  of  the  Infinite;     that    to    men    the    Infinite 


288  PERMANENT  FORCE  OF  ETHICAL  THEORIES. 

"These  religions  are  ladders,"  says  Bishop  Carpenter, 
"and  they  go  up  to  God,  and  the  angels  of  God  will  sup- 
port those  who  seek  to  climb  them.^  Did  not  Attar,  the 
Persian  poet,  twenty  generations  since,  represent  Gabriei 
as  overhearing  the  divine  answer  to  the  prayer  of  a  wor- 
shipper, then  flying  to  find  the  saint  who  was  bending  before 
an  idol;  and  it  was  said  by  the  Heavenly  Father, — "I 
consider  not  the  error  of  ignorance,  this  heart  amid  the 
darkness  has  the  highest  place. ' '-  Is  not  this  in  full  accord 
with  the  Christian  Scripture,  that  ' '  In  every  nation  he  that 
feareth  God,  and  worketh  righteousness,  is  acceptable  to» 
him. '  '^ 

especially  reveals  itself  as  'Word,'  because  the  word  is  the  chief 
human  expression  of  thought;  that  man  is  the  highest  element 
in  the  universe,  and  most  nearly  allied  to  the  Infinite;  that  in 
his  present  state  man  is  not  only  in  an  imperfect  condition,  he 
is  in  an  evil  plight;  that  the  invisible  and  spiritual  is  man's- 
ultimate  goal;  thei-efore,  that  the  soul  has  rightful  authority- 
over  the  senses;  that  present  evil  is  transient;  that  spiritual 
gains  are  to  be  won  only  through  suffering;  that  the  Infinite  has 
become  incarnate  to  aid  men  to  attain  to  the  higher  good;  that 
the  higher  good  is  to  be  gained  through  obedience  to  divine  con- 
ditions, hence  obedience  is  the  foot  of  the  soul;  that  faith,  seeing- 
the  invisible,  the  true  behind  the  apparent,  is  the  eye  of  the  soul; 
yet  that  a  love,  which  is  beyond  the  thought  of  constraining  law, 
is  higher  than  simple  obedience,  hence  love  is  the  wing  of  the 
soul;  that  moral  penalty  is  inevitable,  yet  that  there  are  remedial 
energies  in  the  universe;  that  prayer,  as  intercourse  of  man  with 
God,  is  helpful;  that  after  this  world  there  is  a  future  for  the 
soul;  that  the  Infinite  has  revealed  his  will  to  man  through 
Scriptures  which  they  should  study  and  follow.  In  the  sacred 
books  of  both  religions  are  found  certain  statements  of  ethics  not 
very  unlike." — Address,  Parliament  of  Religions,  II,  1274. 

^TJie  Permanent  Elements  of  Religion.  Page  167.   London,  1889. 

^Professor  Charles  Rockwell  Lanman  happily  refers  to  "The 
Accents  of  the  Holy  Ghost  in  India"  in  the  Hindu  Sacred  Books, 
even  when  not  excusing  self-interest  in  the  priesthood. — The- 
World's  Religions.     New  York,  pp.  87,  89. 

'Acts  10:  35. 


CHAPTER    SEVEN:    CONTRASTS    IN    ALTRUISTIC 
SERVICE. 

Is  not  Christianity  essentially  a  preaching  relijiion  ?  Of 
worshipping  congregations,  that  speak  English,  there  are, 
by  a  most  conservative  statement,  more  than  fifty  millions 
of  people  attendant  upon  nearly  a  million  local  religious 
gatherings  every  year  for  religious  instruction  and  wor- 
ship.^ It  is  impossible  to  overestimate  the  sociological 
value  of  this  factor  in  moral  advancement ;  since  it  implies 
the  existence  of  a  sufficiently  large  body  of  laymen  per- 
meated with  Christian  principle  to  give  effective  support 
to  such  altruistic  advance  movements  as  commend  them- 
selves to  sound  business  judgment. 

It  has  been  only  within  relatively  recent  times  that  the 
business  talent  of  the  layman  has  been  largely  available  for 
advancing  the  interests  of  the  Church.  The  value  of  the 
layman  is  his  business  training.  Upon  a  large  scale,  on 
different  continents,  during  a  sufficient  range  of  years,  it 
has  been  proved  that  the  vast  and  varied  resources  of  the 
clergy,  exhibited  in  a  leadership  of  many  centuries,  are 
supplemented,  greatly  to  the  advantage  of  the  Church,  by 
the  active  cooperation  of  eminently  qualified  laymen ;  whose 
practical  success  in  handling  secular  affairs  has  given  them 
a  special  aptitude  in  looking  at  social  problems  and  Church 
work  from  a  layman's  standpoint,  and  in  rendering  inval- 
uable service  in  modifying  the  altruistic  activities  of  the 
Church  and  adapting  them  better  to  the  work  to  be  done. 
As  a  rule,  the  average  clergyman,  in  point  of  scholarship,, 

'This  estimate  is,  for  the  United  States,  based  on  census 
statistics. 

The   estimates   should   suitably   be   so   extended   as   to   include; 
the  non-Hnglish  speaking  peoples  of  Christendom. 
19 


290  PHILANTHROPY. 

is  so  much  above  the  masses  as  to  be  somewhat  out  of  touch 
with  them,  although  not  intentionally  so;  the  average  lay- 
man is  more  in  sympathy  with  the  crowd,  and  his  religious 
activity  offers  to  the  Church  a  distinct  gain  in  its  adapta- 
tion to  the  common  people,  particularly  to  those  least 
favored  in  schooling.  The  Christian  layman  of  the  modern 
era  is  a  very  different  personage  from  the  ancient  or  the 
media3val  man ;  he  has  been  made  so  by  popular  education, 
by  the  new  sciences  that  elbow  him,  by  new  political  con- 
ditions, by  the  religious  responsibility  that  the  open  Bible 
places  upon  the  individual  conscience,  by  the  variety  of 
employments  that  call  to  him  in  this  age.  The  multiplica- 
tion of  the  so-called  learned  professions,  the  development  of 
manufacturing  interests,  the  discovery  of  the  demands  and 
the  furnishing  of  supplies  for  vast  populations,  the  open- 
ing of  new  areas  of  commercial  enterprise,  the  improved 
transportation  business  which  brings  distant  communities 
■into  neighborhood,  the  grasping  of  the  planet  as  if  it  were 
a  mere  village  for  the  purposes  of  business; — by  such  dis- 
-cipline  we  have  a  new  laity,  a  well-proportioned  manhood, 
capable  of  advancing  the  work  of  the  Church.  The  demo- 
cratic Church  government,  that  so  widely  prevails,  has 
helped  the  layman,  making  it  easy  to  gain  the  prominence 
for  which  he  is  fitted.  The  new  conditions  in  which  the 
Church  is  placed  in  the  new  age  demand  new  methods: 
these  the  layman  has  been  helpful  in  discovering,  and  his 
aid  in  their  development  and  application  to  the  case  in  hand 
is  characterized  by  the  ability  which  he  gives  to  his  private 
business.  The  integrity  of  the  merchant  and  his  breadth 
of  view,  the  shrewdness  of  the  counselor,  the  financial 
knowledge  of  the  banker,  the  far-reaching  outlook  of  the 
statesman, —  these  are  at  the  service  of  the  humanitarian 
work  of  the  Church. 

That  Christianity  has  secured  the  active  support  of  a 
vast  multitude  of  business  men  throughout  Christendom 
is  of  the  greater  sociological  importance,  since  the  ultimate 
moral  elevation,  upon  a  continental  scale,  of  the  depressed 


THE  SERVICE  OF  LAYMEN.  291 

races  of  the  world  is  at  bottom  a  business  enterprise,  pos- 
sible only  upon  a  material  basis.  For  conducting  moral 
enterprises  in  distant  parts  of  the  world,  there  must  be  an 
unfailing  supply  of  silver  and  gold  —  the  very  "sinews  of 
war."  From  the  Christian  point  of  view,  a  w^orld-wide 
extension  of  those  forces  through  which  society  is  con- 
structed and  upon  which  it  must  securely  rest  is  imprac- 
ticable, unless  there  is  a  generally  diffused  altruistic  spirit 
affecting  both  capitalists  and  men  of  small  means.  More 
important,  indeed,  than  their  benefactions  is  their  altru- 
istic attitude  in  holding  their  accum.ulations  for  social  uses, 
so  commending  to  all  men  that  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  for 
others  which  actuated  the  Founder  of  Christianity.  When, 
however,  native  business  sagacity  is  combined  with  a  keen 
appreciation  of  moral  values  and  business  men  recognize 
the  priority  of  spiritual  motives,  the  wealth  is  transmuted 
into  Christian  power,  with  its  gift  of  education  and  the 
social  betterment  of  the  world.  And  when  this  result  is  so 
reached  as  to  enlist  a  great  many  millions  of  laymen,  Chris- 
tianitj%  as  compared  wdth  the  non-Christian  faiths  and 
philosophies,  is  in  a  position  of  unique  advantage,  if  a  ques- 
tion be  raised  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  in  social  com- 
petition. 

As  to  a  possible  contrast : —  it  may  be  said  that  the  very 
theory  of  Brahmanism  precludes  the  earnest  and  devoted 
priesthood  from  systematically  utilizing  to  the  utmost  the 
practical  talent  of  the  lower  castes,  and  so  they  are 
debarred  from  securing  their  cooperation  for  the  possible 
extension  of  Hinduism  as  a  world  religion ;  and  the  mendi- 
cant monks  of  Buddhism,  with  all  their  spiritual  qualities, 
have  never  so  organized  the  laity  as  to  have  a  large  working 
body  at  hand  to  advance  their  faith,  either  in  aggressive 
social  reform  or  in  the  businesslike  propagation  of  their 
system  throughout  the  world;  nor  has  the  Chinese  literary 
class  so  eminent  in  its  intellectual  discipline  —  occupying  a 
position  in  regard  to  Confucianism  analogous  to  that  of  the 
leaders  of   organized  religions, —  ever  made   an   extensive 


292  THE  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  LABOR. 

enrollment  of  able  men  in  other  callings  to  extend  to  the 
four  quarters  of  the  globe  the  philosophy  of  their  Classics; 
yet  in  Islam  there  are  men  of  affairs,  who  in  considerable 
numbers  during  different  ages  have  sought  most  zealously 
to  proclaim  the  prophet  in  those  new  lands  into  which  they 
have  entered  in  a  business  way  or  through  military  con- 
quest. No  other  great  religion  is  so  well  equipped  as  Chris- 
tianity, through  the  activity  of  a  great  body  of  laymen,  for 
ameliorating  the  social  condition  of  mankind,  and  for  the 
steady  propagation  of  its  own  faith  throughout  the  world: 
Christendom  having  a  vast  army  of  trained  business  men 
who  are  more  interested  in  promoting  an  altruistic  life  than 
in  anything  else. 


CONTRASTS  IN  THE  ATTITUDE  OF  THE  GREAT  RELIGIONS  TOWARD 

LABOR. 

Must  there  not,  however,  be  first  a  generally  diffused 
material  prosperity,  and  an  accumulation  of  large  capital 
in  the  hands  of  men  most  capable  of  effecting  the  organ- 
ization of  industry,  as  the  material  basis  of  society,  and 
establishing  a  base  for  distant  aggressive  moral  operations? 
Capital  is  no  more  needed  for  commercial  adventure  across 
the  globe  than  for  distant  altruistic  enterprise.  The  indus- 
trial development  of  great  races,  and  the  accumulation  'of 
capital  for  promoting  civilization,  are  essential  factors  in 
social  advancement. 

Might  not  a  question  be  easily  raised,  whether  there  has 
been  an  unspeakable  loss  to  industrial  Asia  in  the  fact  that, 
all  told,  some  hundreds  of  millions  of  able  bodied  men, 
intellectually  the  brightest  and  morally  the  best  —  the  nat- 
ural leaders  in  social  and  industrial  advancement, —  during 
more  than  two  thousand  years,  have  been  systematically 
relegated  to  a  recluse  life,  living  by  Buddhist  beggary 
rather  than  by  intelligently  developing  the  natural  resources 
of  their  continent?      Take  it  as  it  stands  to-day.      The 


LOSS  THROUGH  SACRED  MENDICITY.  293 

amazing  statements  are  made  by  Rockhill  that  there  are 
three  lamas  to  every  family  in  Thibet/  and  by  Gihnour  that 
more  than  one-half  the  present  male  population  of  IMon^olia 
are  lamas,  and  that  the  rule  requires  every  third  man.^ 
The  withdrawal,  throughout  great  nationalities,  age  after 
age,  of  vast  numbers  from  industrial  callings  —  the  sweat  of 
the  brow  at  bread  earning, —  and  their  systematic  support 
by  the  voluntary  contributions  of  their  neighbors,  is  a  viola- 
tion of  that  universal  wholesome  law  of  labor  which  is  at 
the  foundation  of  an  advancing  civilization.  Nor  can  it  be 
said  that  they  fairly  earn  their  living  by  the  slight  amount 
of  education  they  give  to  their  neighbors'  children;  and  in 
respect  to  giving  instruction  in  moral  precepts,  as  far  as 
they  do  so,  it  is  not  reasonable  that  it  should  take  one  man 
out  of  every  two  or  three  to  tell  the  others  how  to  behave, 
and  get  his  living  out  of  them  for  merely  telling  them. 
Not,  indeed,  that  it  is  looked  at  in  this  way.  The  laity 
think  rather  or  should  think,  according  to  what  Gautama 
said,  that  withdrawal  from  the  world  is  needful  to  a  per- 
fected life,  and  that  extinguishing  desire  is  the  chief  good, — 
and  where  such  is  the  ideal  scheme  of  the  universe  it  is 
meritorious  to  feed  monastic  brethren:  it  being,  in  the  the- 
ory, not  of  the  slightest  consequence  whether  they  render 
any  equivalent  whatever,  even  so  far  as  to  promote  good 
morals  in  the  communities  about  them, —  the  quiescent 
laity  little  thinking  that  the  extinction  of  desires,  if  success- 
ful, would  put  a  stop  to  all  possibility  of  an  advancing 
civilization. 

To  the  eye  of  the  traveler,  what  contrast  is  more  obvious 
between  Christian  and  non-Christian  races  than  that  of  the 
relative  material  well-being  of  the  industrial  population? 
Does  it  not  appear,  upon  the  face  of  it,  that  the  non-Chris- 
tian systems  have  developed  civilizations  less  progressive, 
as  to  furnishing  remunerative  industries,  and  improving 
the  condition  of  the  common  people?     Is  he  not  an  essen- 

^Land  of  the  Lamas,  p.  215.     New  York,  1S91. 
-Among  the  Mongols,  p.  221. 


294  LABOR   IN    CHINA. 

tially  uncultivated  man  whose  life  is  so  petty  as  to  be 
unmindful  of  the  fact  that,  beyond  the  horizon,  there  are 
more  than  two  hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  people  Avho 
have  no  home  and  practically  no  clothing,  and  an  addi- 
tional population  of  more  than  six  hundred  and  fifty  mil- 
lions w^ho  are  half  clad  and  who  live  in  impoverished  huts? 

So  far  as  this  relates  to  the  working  men  of  China  and 
India,  is  not  the  fact  connected  with  conditions  precedent, 
intimately  concerned  with  the  religious  systems  held  by  a 
population  of  between  six  and  seven  hundred  millions  in 
these  two  countries? 

The  powerful  racial  stock  of  China  will  never  become 
rich  through  material  products,  until  first  made  rich  in 
Chinese  individual  character.  If  a  great  capitalist  is  so 
related  to  a  multitude  of  small  investors  that  their  welfare 
may  depend  on  his  integrity,  any  lack  of  this  moral  qual- 
ity stands  in  the  way  of  industrial  development.  Is  not 
this  the  trouble  with  China  ?  There  is  reported  to  be  little 
basis  of  commercial  confidence  on  which  to  build  up  busi- 
ness; mercantile  honor  existing  through  a  system  of  guar- 
anties, which  is  relied  on  rather  than  personal  probity ;  the 
conduct  of  business  enterprises  that  depend  on  large  pro- 
duction and  small  profits  being  made  impossible  through 
widespread  unreliability  and  private  peculation.^  Jap- 
anese cotton  mills  have,  however,  paid  w^ell  in  China, 
through  being  in  charge  of  foreign  management.  Yet, 
upon  a  national  scale,  no  success  is  possible  in  legitimate 
business  enterprises  wdthout  the  cooperation  of  greater 
bodies  of  faithful  and  intelligent  laborers  than  are  available 
with  their  present  hereditary  traits  and  racial  tendencies. 
Another  thing  which  hinders  the  industrial  development 
is  the  Chinese  system  of  txation;  by  ages  of  custom,  the 
collectors  of  revenue  deduct  their  own  pay  before  remitting, 
and  this  proves  unfavorable  to  the  establishment  of  new 
business,  through  the  tendency  of  officials  to  secure  the 

Wide  Colquhoun's   China  in  Transformation,  pp.   256-9.     New 
York,  1898. 


POVERTY  OF  WORKING   MEN   IN   CHINA.  295 

profits  by  a  great  and  variable  extortion.  By  this,  work- 
ing men  are  rendered  unambitious  about  accumulating,  and 
capitalists  are  compelled  to  league  to  some  extent  with 
violence  rather  than  attend  solely  to  manufacturing  or 
mining.  Were  these  obstacles  removed,  the  business  pos- 
sibilities of  the  empire  would  sooner  benefit  the  workmen 
by  more  remunerative  employment.  The  elevation  of  the 
millions,  their  more  comfortable  feeding,  clothing,  housing, 
and  the  working  of  more  than  four  hundred  thousand 
square  miles  of  coal-producing  territory  and  exhaustless 
supplies  of  pure  magnetic  iron  ore,  would  make  a  new 
China  and  in  some  respects  affect  industrial  conditions 
throughout  the  w^orld. 

Yet  instead  of  this,  the  masses  of  the  people  of  China  are 
poor  with  a  poverty  of  which  the  Western  mind  has  no 
conception.^  The  price  of  skilled  labor  is  from  ten  to 
thirty  cents  a  day,  and  unskilled  from  eight  to  ten  cents. 
A  carrier  will  walk  with  a  letter  thirty  miles  for  eight 
cents.  Boatmen  will  pull  a  boat  against  the  current  a  hun- 
dred and  twenty  miles,  and  walk  back,  for  fifty  cents. 
Throughout  a  vast  population,  the  failure  of  one  day's 
work  is  the  failure  of  food.^  Meat  is  cheaper  in  China  than 
in  the  United  States,  yet  a  Chinese  laborer  does  not  eat  a 
pound  of  meat  in  a  month.  Steamed  rice  is  the  staple  food, 
with  a  little  cabbage  in  a  great  deal  of  water,  and  minute 

'This  paragraph  is  based  upon  the  statement  of  Hon.  Chester 
Holcombe,  in  the  Youth's  Companion,  Boston,  May  17,  1S88,  the 
writer  being  at  that  time  Secretary  of  the  American  Legation 
at  Pekin.  Vide  also  Holcombe's  "The  Real  Chinaman,"  pp.  310- 
329. 

Intelligent  travelers  give  it  as  their  judgment  that  there  is  no 
time  when  one  family  out  of  four  is  not  scant  for  food, —  perhaps 
ninety  millions  being  underfed.  Secretary  Wishard  says, —  "I 
never  saw  such  poverty  as  I  saw  in  China." 

^'The  Hon.  S.  L.  Gracey,  late  Consul  at  Foochow,  says  that  there 
are  multitudes  who  live  on  a  dollar  and  a  half  or  two  dollars  a 
month.  A  writer  in  Macmillaa's  Magazine  states  that  in  winter, 
when  wages  are  so  low  that  sufficient  food  cannot  be  bought  to 
repair  the  muscular  waste  incident  to  labor,  men  sometimes 
hibernate  by  avoiding  exertion,  so  getting  on  with  little  food. 


296 


LABOR   IN   CHINA, 


fragments  of  raw  turnip  for  relish.  The  average  meal  does 
not  cost  over  two  cents  for  each  person.  There  are  two 
hundred  millions  of  people  in  China  whose  food  consump- 
tion does  not  average,  for  each,  over  five  cents  a  day.  A 
workman's  summer  wardrobe  costs  three  dollars.  If  he  is 
not  at  work,  he  gets  on  for  the  season  with  twenty-cents' 
worth  of  rags.  The  house  is  one  room^  for  a  family  of  five 
or  six,  with  no  floor,  and  no  furniture  save  a  table,  one  or 
two  stools,  and  a  brick  bed.  There  is  no  chimney,  and, 
except  for  cooking,  no  fire,  even  in  winter,  in  a  climate  as 
cold  as  New  York  or  Philadelphia.- 

Dr.  C.  A.  Stanley,  of  Tien  Tsin,  in  a  private  letter  to 
the  present  writer,  says  that  in  North  China  the  houses  are 
of  mud  or  brick,  constructed  without  regard  to  ventilation 
and  dryness,  but  facing  the  south  for  winter  heat ;  that  the 
average  home  has  a  kettle,  a  few  bowls  and  chopsticks,  a 
knife  for  cutting  vegetables,  a  bread  board  and  rolling  pin, 
and  gourds  or  dishes  to  hold  water,  oil,  and  salt;  that  the 
more  wealthy  are  careless  of  cleanliness  and  the  require- 
ments of  health;  that  a  wardrobe  and  cupboard,  box  and 
table,  bench  or  chair,  are  in  most  houses,  although  seldom 
found  among  the  poor. 

^The  Eighth  Census  of  Scotland  (p.  XXXIII),  however,  states 
that,  of  the  entire  popuhition,  one-third  live  in  houses  of  one 
room,  and  that  more  than  sixty-nine  per  cent,  live  in  houses 
of  one  or  two  rooms.  In  Edinburgh  thirty-three  per  cent,  are 
in  one  room;  thirty  more  in  two  rooms;  and  only  nineteen  out 
of  a  hundred  in  houses  of  more  than  four  rooms. —  Cited  in 
Mitchell's  Past  in  the  Present,  pp.  176,  177. 

-A  careful  resume  of  the  facts  as  to  Chinese  wage  earning  is 
to  be  found  in  Simcox's  Primitive  Civilizations,  Vol.  II,  Chapter 
XXVII. 

As  a  contrasted  condition,  it  is  stated  by  the  Bulletin  of  the 
United  States  Bureau  of  Labor  (No.  53,  July,  1904,  pp.  704,  705) 
that  25,440  families  of  workingmen  (comprising  more  than  five 
persons  each),  in  leading  industrial  centers  in  thirty-three  states, 
averaged  annually  $827.19  income;  and  $768.54  expense,  of  which 
$326.90  was  for  food:  the  food  items  and  details  of  other  expense 
indicating  that  the  average  man  has  a  degree  of  comfort  unknown 
to  China. 


OBSTACLES  TO  ADVANCEMENT,  297 

The  Chinese  race  as  such  is  indomitable  in  its  industry; 
persevering]:,  economical,  docile  and  contented;^  and  the 
hard  workers  of  the  nation  are  deserving  of  a  larger  and 
more  practical  help  from  the  literary  or  educated  class,  the 
officials  and  leaders  in  life,  who  really  do  little  in  the  way 
of  relief  except  in  a  sporadic  v/ay.-  Although  there  is  no 
caste  in  China,  yet  the  boundaries  and  spheres  of  the  vari- 
ous classes  are  clearly  defined,  and  so  practically  recog- 
nized and  enforced  that  there  is  very  little  chance  for  any 
one  to  get  out  of  the  groove  in  which  he  moves.^  And  if 
one  attempts  it,  he  is  handicapped  by  the  patriarchal  fam- 
ily system  which  prevents  independent  individual  earning, 
and  which  compels  him  to  conduct  his  own  business  in  the 
interests  of  all  his  relatives  without  regard  to  their  fitness 
to  participate  in  his  work.  The  prevailing  ancestral  wor- 
ship not  only  tends  constantly  to  over-populate  the  empire, 
but  it  leads  the  masses  to  abide  near  the  graves  of  their 
ancestors  which  must  be  annually  visited  and  decorated,  so 
keeping  workmen  in  constant  close  competition  with  each 
other  for  the  scant  means  of  living.  The  highly  organized 
intellectual  system  which  has  mastered  China  and  sustained 
the  imperial  throne,  during  twenty-five  centuries,  has  from 
the  beginning  so  crystallized  conservatism  as  to  effectually 
retard  popular  advancement  along  industrial  and  social 
lines,  as  well  as  the  literary  and  civic  and  progress  in  the 
moral  life  of  the  people  at  large.  When,  however,  com- 
mercial confidence  and  modern  methods  of  intercommuni- 
cation open  up  the  resources  of  the  vast  expanse  gf  Asia, 
and  assimilate  the  diverse  interests  of  the  varied  popula- 

^Address  in  Boston,  April,  1895,  by  Rev.  Arthur  H.  Smitli,  D.  D., 
of  the  North  China  Mission. 

^An  agriculturalist,  with  two  acres  and  a  half,  has  about 
twenty-five  dollars  a  year  income  above  his  living;  his  farm 
helper  does  well  if  he  saves  three  or  four  dollars.  He  has  no 
seventh  day  for  a  rest  day. 

^United  States  Consular  Reports  upon  Labor  in  Foreign  Coun- 
tries, III,  348.     1884. 


5^98  LABOR  IN  INDIA. 

tions,  the  opportunities  of  a  new  era  will  favor  the  manual 
toilers  of  the  empire. 

In  India  is  not  the  caste  system  inimical  to  the  interest 
of  working  men?  The  devout  and  philosophical  leaders  of 
thought  and  shapers  of  life  in  Southern  Asia  have  so  held 
down  the  great  masses  of  the  people  by  religious  regulations 
maintained  since  the  dawn  of  history  and  in  force  to-day, 
as  to  hamper  not  only  their  civic,  intellectual  and  moral 
freedom,  but  limit  also  their  industrial  activities  so  that 
every  man  is  held  to  what  his  ancestors  have  done  for  cen- 
turies. Every  carpenter's  son  must  be  a  carpenter,  and 
every  shoemaker's  son  must  stick  to  his  father's  last,  not 
only  for  centuries  but  for  millenniums.  The  lower  of  the 
four  principal  castes  is  perpetually  subdivided ;  there  being, 
for  example,  forty-eight  kinds  of  cattlemen,  and  ninety- 
eight  kinds  of  carpenters.  It  would  be  in  Europe  much  as 
if  one  man  were  to  do  nothing  but  drive  nails,  and  another 
be  always  out  of  work  unless  using  the  cross-cut  saw.  Iron 
custom  keeps  a  man  in  that  social  status  in  which  he  was 
born,  each  generation  adding  new  links  to  the  chain  that 
is  to  be  hung  about  the  neck  of  the  next  generation.  It  is 
no  question  of  what  is  right  and  best,  but  what  custom 
approves.^  Individual  will  is  merged  in  the  will  of  the 
caste.  A  man  acts  not  in  adjustment  to  the  needs  of  to-day, 
but  in  accord  with  the  custom  of  past  ages.  This  limits 
the  means  of  living ;  forbids  a  varied  industry ;  shuts  up  the 
desire  for  knowledge,  there  being  no  use  in  learning  any- 
thing else,  since  a  blacksmith's  boy  at  five  must  begin  to 
make  nails.-     The  caste  system,  too,  so  extinguishes  human 

Tor  a  full  yet  condensed  statement  of  the  impossibility  of 
social  progress  under  the  caste  system,  vide  Jones'  India's  Prob- 
lem, pp.  26,  27;   46,  47. 

-Industrial  Effect  of  the  Patriarchal  Family  System  in  India. — 
The  incubus  of  caste  in  hindering  industrial  individual  effort  is 
made  the  worse  by  the  Hindu  joint-family  or  patriarchal  system; 
which  denies  to  individual  members  separate  possessions  or 
privileges,  which  fosters  idleness,  dissension,  improvidence,  and 
puts  a  ban  upon  individual  activity. —  Tide  Jones'  India's  Prob- 
lem, pp.  24,  25. 


EFFECT  OF  THE  CASTE  SYSTEM.  299 

kindness  between  laborers,  that  when  an  Ahmednagar 
workman  fell  from  a  building,  the  other  workmen,  being 
of  different  caste,  would  not  help  him;  an  English  soldier 
offered  him  water,  and  because  he  took  it,  he  was  disci- 
plined by  his  own  caste  as  soon  as  he  recovered,  and  it  was 
only  at  great  expense  that  he  kept  himself  from  being 
turned  out.^  In  this  way  society  is  maintained  at  a  stand- 
still. No  one  really  knows  how  many  castes  and  sub-castes 
there  are  in  India.  In  respect  to  legal  codes  there  are 
three  hundred  unhomogeneous  castes.-  Bruce,  in  his  early 
letters,  numbered  a  hundred  and  fifty,  which  would  not 
eat  nor  drink  with  each  other,  nor  associate  with  each  other 
in  any  way.  Mitchell  enumerated  four  hundred  and 
twenty  in  Travancore.^  It  is  often  said  in  India,  that 
there  are  a  thousand  castes.  There  are  eighty  principal 
subdivisions  of  the  Sudra,  with  an  incredible  number  of 
variations.*  These  divisions  are  believed  to  be  divinely 
instituted ;  the  Brahman  being  as  unlike  a  Sudra,  as  a  horse 
is  unlike  a  donkey.  Did  not  the  upper  caste  proceed  from 
the  mouth  of  the  Arranger  of  the  Universe?  The  soldier 
caste  proceeded  from  his  arms:  and  the  merchants  from 

^Letters  from  India,  by  Henry  J.  Bruce,  p.  84.  Privately 
printed.     Satara,   1879. 

"It  is  well  enough,"  say  the  Hindus,  "for  God  to  ignore  social 
distinctions,  but  not  for  man." — Cited  in  Hopkins'  Religions  of 
India,  p.  507. 

-The  British  Encyclopedia. 

^Hinduism,  by  J.  Murray  Mitchell,  p.  192. 

*In  the  Madras  Census  Report  for  1881,  Sir  William  Hunter 
says  that  there  are  three  thousand  separate  classes  among  the 
Hindus,  so  minute  are  the  subdivisions.  When  it  is  taken  into 
account  that  the  natives  of  India  are  also  divided  by  more  than 
three  score  languages,  and  widely  extended  dialects  as  divisive 
as  if  distinct  languages,  and  that  every  village  is  split  by  diverse 
religious  service,  it  must  appear  that  Hinduism  has  no  social 
power  for  elevating  a  great  people.  From  a  sociological  point  of 
view,  never  did  so  many  hundreds  of  millions  of  people  ever 
stand  in  greater  need  of  the  unifying  principles  that  underlie 
Christian  civilization. 


300  LABOR  IN  INDIA, 

his  thiohs.  The  serving  class^  was  created  from  the  feet 
of  Brahm  that  they  might  be  obedient  to  the  Brahmans, 
who  have  the  right  to  command  their  hands,  and  —  by  the 
laws  of  Manu  —  to  take  their  property.  Before  the  Brit- 
ish occupied  India,  the  Sudras,  in  many  parts  of  India, 
were  not  allowed  to  walk  the  public  roads.  The  penalty 
for  murdering  one  of  the  Sudras  was  the  same  as  if  he  were 
a  dog.-  Every  seventh  or  sixth  family  of  the  two  hundred 
and  eighty  registered  millions  in  India  is  an  outcast ;  or,  to 
use  the  term  invented  by  the  census  bureau,  there  are  forty 
or  fifty  millions  who  belong  to  the  "depressed"  classes, 
who  are  below  the  line  of  social  respectability.  In  the 
iladras  Presidency  they  comprise  a  fourth  part  of  the  pop- 
ulation. The  non-caste  people  live  apart  from  the  village. 
They  are  poor  beyond  description,  ignorant,  weak,  down- 
trodden, squalid,  despised.  There  are  two  principal  divi- 
sions,—  the  Malah  or  Pariah,  and  the  Madega  or  leather 
workers.  Very  rarely  there  is  one  who  leases  a  little  land, 
but  the  others  work  generation  after  generation  for  those 
who  own  the  soil  or  those  who  commonly  lease  it,  their  ser- 

^Twice-born  are  the  Brahmans,  the  Warriors,  and  the  Mer- 
chants who  keep  cows  and  trade  in  money  and  goods;  and  the 
Sudra,  the  so-called  un-Aryan  people,  are  to  serve  the  twice-born. 

=The  present  every  day  condition  of  vast  numbers  of  the 
Sudras,  the  laboring  class  of  India,  is  pictured  by  missionary 
Gutterson  of  Melur,  who,  when  camping  near  Mangulam,  saw  the 
going  forth  of  the  laborers  from  the  village: — "Do  they  begin 
work  with  a  hearty  meal?  Not  they.  A  cup  of  cold  rice  gruel, 
or  a  handful  of  cold  boiled  rice,  seasoned  with  red  pepper,  is  all 
that  they  have,  and  they  are  glad  enough  to  get  even  that.  A 
dozen  men  and  some  young  women  are  the  first  comers.  They 
are  sharpening  their  bill-hooks  on  the  broad  root  of  a  banian 
tree  near  our  tent,  preparatory  to  their  day's  work  of  wood-cut- 
ting in  the  mountains  four  or  five  miles  away.  The  men  are 
naked  except  a  scanty  cloth  about  the  waist  and  a  few  rags  over 
their  shoulders.  The  women  are  not  much  better  off.  They  will 
work  all  day,  returning  at  nightfall  with  as  much  fire  wood  as 
they  can  carry  on  their  heads,  and  to-morrow  they  will  carry  it 
from  seven  to  ten  miles  to  market,  and  receive  from  seven  to  ten 
'Cents  for  two  days'  labor." 


RECENT  IMPROVED  CONDITIONS.  301 

vice  being:  due  by  custom,  although  they  are  not  hereditary 
laborers  or  slaves.  There  is  no  fixed  compensation,  so  much 
a  day,  but  wages  are  at  the  will  and  discretion  of  the  mas- 
ter, after  the  annual  harvest. 

The  propriety  of  classifying  the  Hindus  with  the  "back- 
ward races"  of  the  world  is  emphasized  by  their  clinging  so 
long  to  the  caste  system,  which  originated  in  what  is  so 
common, —  the  aiding  of  a  father's  work  by  his  sons,  gen- 
eration after  generation,  until  the  parental  calling  comes  to 
be  considered  as  a  heritage.  This  point  of  view  was  known 
to  ancient  Rome,  to  early  France  and  England,  and  to  the 
primitive  peoples  of  America ;  in  progressive  civilization  it 
was,  however,  soon  lost  sight  of.  Since,  therefore,  the  pre- 
dominant religious  system  of  India  is  so  entrenched  within 
caste  observance  that  it  cannot  exist  if  separated  from  it, 
Hinduism  must  be  classified  as  a  "backward"  religious 
development,  closely  related  to  what  is  essentially  the  primi- 
tive culture  period  of  a  great  people. 

The  industrial  development  of  India  has  been  favored  by 
Christian  occupancy,  not  only  through  public  works,  as  road 
and  bridge  building  and  irrigation,  but  by  English  com- 
mercial enterprise,  railways,  mining,  the  growth  of  cotton 
and  tea,  and  the  expansion  of  Indian  commerce.  The  gov- 
ernment of  India,  too,  is  interested  in  having  useful  trades 
taught  to  the  young  men  of  the  country,  and  to  this  end 
liberal  grants  are  made  for  industrial  buildings  and  tools. 
This  work  has  been  supplemented  by  foreign  philanthro- 
pists residing  in  the  country,  there  being  established,  as  a 
gift  from  far  away  peoples  in  Christendom,  nearly  fifty 
industrial  schools.  Low  caste  children,  through  Christian- 
ity, have  been  able  to  attend  the  public  schools,  so  removing 
the  stigma  of  their  social  degradation.  Under  culture  they 
develop  superior  character  and  intelligence, —  among  the 
Telugus  notably  so;  some  are  successful  teachers  in  North- 
ern India;  in  various  localities  they  rival  the  Brahmans 
in  obtaining  positions  under  the  government,  in  railway 
service,  or  in  the  professions;  non-caste  women,  when  edu- 


302  WORKING    MEN    IN    CIIRISTENDOM. 

eated,  are  greatly  in  advance  of  uneducated  high  caste  Hin- 
dus, or  the  women  of  Islam. ^ 

As  to  the  relation  between  Christianity  and  the  hand- 
toilers  of  Christendom,  the  only  pertinent  inquiry  that  can 
be  made  is  whether  the  average  man  may  not  be  better  situ- 
ated than  in  non-Christian  realms.  If  very  much  better 
conditioned  now,  the  greatest  improvement  has  been  in 
recent  centuries.  Has  it  not  been  in  social  science,  as  it 
has  been  in  the  extension  of  commerce,  in  founding  sys- 
tems of  finance,  in  the  improvement  of  modes  of  travel, 
and  in  the  practical  application  of  scientific  discoveries? 
The  greatest  advance  has  been  made  within  a  few  genera- 
tions. Is  it  not,  however,  true  that  the  history  of  Christen- 
dom shows  that  the  laboring  man  has  gradually  come  into 
new  relations  to  politics,  to  schooling,  to  the  social  morali- 
ties, to  health  and  home,  and  that  this  has  been  wrought  by 
the  application  of  the  principles  of  Christianity  to  the 
adjustment  of  labor  problems?  If,  through  silent  revolu- 
tions, in  diverse  circumstances,  upon  a  large  area,  equality 
of  condition  has  been  more  freely  given  to  the  average  man 
in  Christendom  to  enter  upon  the  competitions  of  life,  this 
improvement  of  his  chance  is  the  main  thing.  Does  not 
the  workingman  in  England,  for  example,  live  in  a  new 
world  ?  After  the  coming  of  the  Bible  into  the  hands  of  the 
populace  in  Christendom  a  few  generations  ago,  it  took 
time  to  determine  whether  the  kings  should  rule  the  people 
or  the  people  the  kings ;  that  being  happily  settled,  the  peo- 
ple began  to  debate  what  would  improve  their  own  condi- 
tion. In  more  recent  generations,  those  who  have  a  com- 
petence have  cooperated  with  their  fellows  in  the  way  of 
self-help  through  the  introduction  of  a  larger  self-govern- 
ment in  the  nation ;  this  has  tended  to  protect  the  legal 
rights  of  workingmen  and  to  give  them  greater  freedom  of 
opportunity.  The  middle  classes  and  leading  peers  of  the 
realm  have  worked  together  in  this  mighty  movement, — 
seeking  to  promote  the  permanent  harmonious  work  of  self- 

'Chapter  XXX,  in  Bishop  J.  M.  Thoburn's  India  and  Malaysia. 


GERMAN  STATE  INSURANCE.  303 

governing  bodies  of  citizens,  that  harmony  which  allows 
freedom  for  industrial  development;  and  to-day  Christian 
England  is  fully  aroused  to  the  work  of  elevating  every  one 
bearing  the  name  of  man  in  their  happy  isle,  by  the  practi- 
cal application  of  Christian  principles  to  social  life.  Into 
the  homes  of  the  most  thoughtful  people  has  come  a  higher 
conception  of  what  life  is  for.  The  public  mind  has  become 
so  sensitive  to  the  wrongs  under  which  working  people  have 
suffered  in  former  generations,  that  the  relief  of  those  inju- 
ries has  come  to  be  uppermost  as  a  practical  motive  in 
directing  the  course  of  legislation  and  the  conduct  of  gov- 
ernment. To  aid  the  manual  laborer  in  his  calling,  to 
befriend  him  in  misfortune,  to  minister  to  his  intellectual 
and  moral  needs  has  come  to  be  a  paramount  claim  in  the 
minds  of  those  who  shape  national  policy \  That  every 
human  being  should  have  the  means  of  exercising  the  pow- 
ers and  affections  of  man  —  self -culture,  progress  in 
knowledge  and  virtue,  the  means  of  health,  comfort,  and 
happiness, —  was  the  ideal  set  forth  by  "William  EUery 
Channing:  the  world  has  not  far  advanced  beyond  this 
statement  of  the  highest  social  truth.     If  man  is  essentially 

^An  imperial  illustration  of  this  point  is  seen  in  the  system  of 
German  State  Insurance  against  accident,  sickness,  age  and 
invalidity.  Almost  all  of  twenty  millions  of  German  workmen 
■with  their  wives  and  children  are  protected  and  insured.  The 
system  is  based  on  active  Christian  love,  and  the  ideal  of  a  king- 
dom of  social  welfare.  It  was  founded  by  the  first  German 
emperor  and  his  great  chancellor,  Bismarck.  It  has  been  improved 
through  the  long  and  minute  labor  of  the  government.  Especial 
progress  and  enlargement  have  taken  place  under  the  present 
secretary  of  state.  Dr.  Count  von  Posadowski  Wehner.  Such  pre- 
cautions against  accidents  are  provided,  that  their  number  is 
much  diminished.  Invalids'  homes,  hospitals,  consumptives' 
homes,  and  dwellings  for  workmen  have  been  built.  The  rate 
of  mortality  has  decreased  because  the  people,  not  having  to  pay 
for  their  physicians,  call  on  them  more  promptly  and  make  more 
extended  use  of  them.— Address  at  Harvard  University,  by  Dr. 
Theodore  Lev/aid,  imperial  commissioner  to  the  St.  Louis  Expo- 
sition of  1904. 


304  WORKING    MEN    IN    CHRISTENDOM. 

social  by  nature,  created  for  friendship  with  his  kind;  if 
primitive  forms  of  association  have  prepared  the  way  for 
society  in  later  ages;  if  the  division  of  labor  and  mutual 
aid,  found  among  the  cells  and  organs  of  living  bodies,  are 
not  more  needful  than  the  spirit  of  mutual  aid  in  the  social 
life  of  man  ;^ —  it  is  to  be  looked  for  in  an  economic  stage 
of  civilization,  that  a  highly  organized  society  should  so 
avail  itself  of  the  service  of  varied  laborers  that  no  one  work- 
ing apart  need  clash  with  the  interests  of  others,  but  consti- 
tute a  part  of  a  harmonious  whole  —  a  vital  part  of  that 
progressive  humanity  which  is  but  "a  man  v.'ho  lives  and 
learns  forever. ' '  Christendom  has  come  to  know  that  those 
combinations  of  capital,  and  of  honest,  faithful,  capable^ 
and  well-paid  workmen,  which  alone  make  possible  the 
world's  great  industries,  can  be  made  only  where  there  is  a 
certain  degree  of  civil  freedom,  based  upon  principles  iden- 
tical wdth  those  which  underlie  the  moral  government  of  the 
universe. 

There  are  certain  further  points  of  contrast  between  the 
Christian  and  non-Christian  attitude  toward  the  working- 
man.  Be  it  said,  however,  of  Islam  that  labor  is  so  highly 
honored  that  there  can  be  no  social  caste;  Mohammed  not 
only  partaking  of  the  common  labors  but  treating  all  men 
as  equals,  and  so  enforcing  this  doctrine  in  the  Koran  that 
among  Moslems  everywhere  all  men  are  on  the  same  foot- 
ing. Although  Buddhism  dissolved  the  bonds  of  caste,  no 
mendicant  w^as  ever  a  hand-toiler.  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
worked  as  a  carpenter,  supporting  his  mother.  The  Apos- 
tle Paul  earned  his  living  at  tent  making.^  This  ideal,  so 
honored  in  the  very  founding  of  Christianity,  is  diametri- 
cally opposite  to  the  common  usage  of  the  Brahmans.     And 

'This  point  may  be  further  illustrated  by  that  associatioa 
among  animals,  which  favors  evolution  and  survival  —  every 
individual  benefitting  by  the  experience  of  all. —  Consult  M.  Kro- 
potkin's  Mutual  Aid  Among  Animals,  in  the  Nineteenth  Century^ 
Vol.  28.     1890. 

=Acts  18:  3.     I  Cor.  9:  18.     I  Thess.  4:  11,  12,  and  11:  9. 


OPTIMISM  AS  A  SOCIAL  POWER.  305 

it  is  with  the  literary  class  in  China,  from  -whom  the  rulers 
are  selected,  that  Confucius  has  been  always  identified. 

Christendom  has  established  many  Institutes,  Peoples' 
Palaces,  Peoples'  Clubs,  and  Associations  for  improving 
dwellings  of  workmen  ;^  and  the  training  of  skilled  labor 
has  been  undertaken  upon  a  large  scale;  these  movements 
are  practically  unknown  in  non-Christian  lands.  Christian 
philanthropists  have,  moreover,  opened  a  hundred  and 
sixty-seven  industrial  schools,  with  an  enrollment  of  more 
than  nine  thousand  pupils,  in  the  non-Christian  parts  of  the 
world.  Christendom,  too,  is  the  land  of  hope  for  working 
men.  The  literary  class  in  China  entertains  no  roseate  view 
of  the  life  chances  of  that  immense  population  which  is  pre- 
vented by  poverty  from  schooling  their  children  and  gain- 
ing the  social  and  political  prizes  of  the  empire.  The 
morning  hymns  of  the  early  settlers  of  Hindustan  have  long 
since  become  but  a  tradition.  The  Sudras  and  outcasts  of 
India  expect  nothing  better  from  Brahmanism  than  what 
they  have  to-day.  Christian  philanthropists  in  India  do 
not  at  first  allude  to  life  everlasting,  they  wait  rather  till 
their  hearers  find  this  life  more  desirable.  The  European 
ancients  believed  that  the  happiest  era  had  gone  by;  the 
Hebrews  and  Christians  reversed  it,  and  set  the  Golden  Age 
as  the  future  goal.  Will  not  the  races  that  are  the  most 
hopeful,  achieve  most, —  energetically  planning  for  social, 
commercial,  industrial  conquest  and  leadership  ? 

For  a  study  in  social  science,  what  is  of  greater  interest 
than  the  constitution  of  the  leading  races  of  mankind  as 
related  to  the  condition  of  their  manual  laborers  and  the 

'The  United  States  census  of  1890  reported  6,141,892  families  as 
owning  their  own  homes,  and  there  were  6,066,417  resident  owners 
of  land.  There  is  probably  no  other  country  in  the  world  that 
so  favors  the  condition  of  the  average  man  as  America,  where 
four  hundred  and  seventy-eight  families  out  of  every  thousand 
are  freeholders.  There  are  not  less  than  five  hundred  and  sixty 
local  building  and  loan  associations  in  the  United  States,  with  a 
million  and  a  half  stockholders,  and  gross  assets  to  the  amount. 
of  four  hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  dollars. 
20 


30G        RELATION  OF  LEADING  RACES  TO  LABOR. 

development  of  human  society  as  seen  from  the  standpoint 
of  working  men : — 

(i)  Is  not  national  thrift  closely  connected  with  equality 
of  opportunity  between  citizens  ?  Is  not  the  highest  degree 
oi  material  prosperity  attained  through  individual  liberty 
to  make  the  most  of  one's  insight  into  the  possibilities  of 
industrial  success  in  new  lines  of  achievement,  and  the 
power  to  adapt  means  to  ends?  These  conditions  are  not 
favored  by  easte.^  How  can  the  Hindus  hope  ever  to  win 
in  any  sharp  industrial  competition  with  races  unhampered 
by  caste? 

(ii)  It  has  been  rem.arked  by  Professor  Alfred  Marshall,- 
Ihat  men  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  in  all  parts  of  the  world, 
do  more  work  in  the  year  than  others.  An  American  work- 
man accomplishes  two  or  three  times  as  much  as  an  Asiatic 
in  a  day.^  The  children  of  more  than  seventy  generations 
of  child-marriage  and  of  depressed  womanhood  cannot  com- 
pete with  the  sons  of  the  virile  Germanic  stock.  How  can 
it  be  otherwise  than  that  the  less  enterprising  peoples  v;ill 
be  finally  weeded  out  by  a  natural  process  ?  Not  in  a  day, 
but  it  is  finally  inevitable.  The  difference,  in  the  relative 
physique  and  m.ental  energy  and  intelligence,  between  racial 
stocks,  is  based  on  causes  that  have  been  operative  for  more 
than  two  thousand  years,  and  the  difference  has  been  notice- 
able during  some  generations,  and  the  long  continued  main- 

^Does  not  the  caste  spirit  characterize  a  low  grade  of  civiliza- 
tion? "One  peculiarity,"  says  Sir  Henry  Maine  (Ancient  Law, 
p.  183),  "invariably  distinguishes  the  infancy  of  society.  Men 
are  regarded  and  treated,  not  as  individuals,  but  always  as  mem- 
bers of  a  particular  group.  Everybody  is  first  a  citizen  and  then 
as  a  citizen  he  is  a  member  of  his  order, —  of  an  aristocracy  or  a 
democracy,  of  an  order  of  patricians  or  of  plebians;  or,  in  those 
societies  which  an  unhappy  fate  has  afflicted  with  a  special  per- 
version in  their  course  of  development,  of  a  caste;  next  he  is  a 
member  of  a  gens,  house,  or  clan;  and  lastly  he  is  a  member  of 
his  family." 

^Principles  of  Economics,  Vol.  I,  p.  730.     London,  1890. 

'United  States  Consular  Reports  on  Labor  in  Foreign  Coun- 
tries, Vol.  3,  pp.  265,  346.     Washington,  1884. 


MORALS  AND  LABOR.  307 

tenance  of  the  difference  can  have  but  one  ending  in  final 
permanency  of  racial  characteristics,  and  a  permanent  re- 
manding of  the  weaker  types  to  a  lower  grade  of 
civilization. 

(iii)  If  a  man's  moral  qualities  put  him  to  a  disadvan- 
tage with  his  fellows,  his  industrial  opportunities  are  less- 
ened; and  if  there  are  races  spiritually  defective  through 
moral  error,  the  very  untrustworthiness  of  individuals  in 
national  groups  must  operate  against  them  when  industrial 
selection  and  the  survival  of  the  fittest  come  into  play.  Is 
not  social  progress  impaired  by  what  hinders  intimate  asso- 
ciation and  mutual  helpfulness  among  men?  Does  not 
moral  error  ultimately  diminish  earnings  and  involve 
finally  an  irrevocable  industrial  loss  ? 

(iv)  If  Christianity  has  been  so  many  ages  in  reaching 
the  present  ground  in  its  relation  to  labor,  is  it  not  proba- 
ble that  the  non-Christian  backward  races  will  advance 
through  voluntarily  changing  the  conditions  inimical  to 
their  highest  prosperity?  If  not,  can  they  escape  perma- 
nency of  industrial  loss  ? 

B. 

THE    ATTITUDE   OF    GREAT    RELIGIONS    TOWARD    THE    RELIEF    OF 

POVERTY. 

A  kindred  contrast  between  Christian  and  non-Christian 
races,  that  appeals  instantly  to  the  eye  of  the  traveler,  is 
the  difference  in  their  attitude  toward  poverty.  Is  not  the 
liberal  gratuitous  relief  of  individual  cases  of  physical  des- 
titution, distress  and  infirmity,  more  common  than  benefi- 
cence upon  such  a  scale  as  to  place  great  bodies  of  the 
human  family  permanently  in  circumstances  more  favorable 
for  self-help  ?  We  may,  perhaps,  say  that  unthinking  bene- 
factions to  the  poor,  prompted  by  a  generous  desire  for  the 
well-being  of  others,  are  to-day  as  characteristic  of  the  bet- 
ter class  of  Chinese  merchants  and  the  best  of  the  Brahmans 
as  of  the  better  class  in  Christendom  in  a  former  age.     Yet 


308  CONTRASTS  IN  POOR  RELIEF. 

in  Christendom  the  slow  development  of  a  beneficent  mental 
habit  during  many  generations  has  so  affected  the  common- 
alty, that  an  individual  skeptic  has  no  power  of  resistance 
but  falls  into  the  altruistic  custom ;  so  that  the  hard  business 
sense  of  Christian  realms  has  been  long  at  work  in  seriously 
attempting  to  solve  the  problem  of  poverty,  working  at  it 
with  a  system  and  success  utterly  unknown  to  the  non- 
Christian  countries, —  the  movement  rallying  to  its  sup- 
port many  most  efficient  philanthropic  helpers  who  do  not 
yield  an  intellectual  assent  to  the  dogmas  of  Christianity. 
This,  to  be  matched  in  China  or  India,  would  call  for  the 
general  diffusion  of  an  altruistic  atmosphere  throughout 
the  marts  of  trade,  to  alleviate  social  sorrow  and  wretched- 
ness by  a  myriad  philanthropies  as  systematically  adminis- 
tered as  mercantile  business,  in  lieu  of  casual  gifts  to 
beggars. 

Are  not  the  problems  world-wide  that  pertain  both  to  the 
improvable  and  to  the  unimprovable  poor?  Their  solving 
belongs  to  the  centuries,  to  the  great  races  and  to  the  great 
religions.  Is  it  not,  however,  true  that  Christianity  is  the 
only  wide-spread  religion,  or  philosophy  of  life,  that  has 
seriously  undertaken  to  solve  the  problem  of  the  poor  — 
seeking  its  own  advancement  as  a  scheme  of  faith  solely 
through  its  sustaining  a  helpful  relation  to  humanity?  If 
late  in  coming  to  this  position,  what  other  great  religion  has 
been  in  advance  of  it  ? 

' '  He  who  destroys  the  pride  which  says  '  I, '  '  mine, '  passes 
into  a  world  which  is  above  the  gods. "  Despite  this  ancient 
saying  of  their  people,  the  Hindus  of  a  hundred  years  ago 
were  described  by  the  first  English  philanthropists  visiting 
their  country  as  "exceedingly  wanting  in  compassion  and 
benevolence."  And  Bishop  Heber  wrote  in  1823,  that  he 
never  before  had  met  a  race  of  men  who  took  so  little 
interest  in  the  sufferings  of  a  neighbor  not  of  their  own 
caste.  Yet  no  country  in  the  Avorld,  containing  nearly 
one-fifth  of  the  human  race,  is  in  so  great  need  of  self- 
sacrificing  service  for  the  poor.     There  are  always  some  mil- 


THE   HINDUS.  309 

lions  among  the  forty  or  fifty  millions  of  non-caste  peo- 
ple who  are  hungry.  The  President  of  an  American 
theological  school,  residing  twenty  years  in  Southern  India, 
reported  to  the  author  that  it  was  not  uncommon  to  look 
out  upon  his  house  lawn  and  there  see  fifty  people  liter- 
ally crying  for  bread: — "They  were  persons  habitually 
underfed.  They  point  you  to  their  sores, —  some  are 
lepers;  there  is  a  skeleton  of  a  woman  pointing  you  to 
her  skeleton  children.  You  know  that  if  you  feed  them 
they  will  be  hungry  tomorrow;  you  know  that  if  you 
feed  them,  there  are  a  hundred  thousand  more  as  hungry 
beyond  your  sight.  When  I  go  touring,  and  take  my  food 
outside  the  tent  to  eat  it,  the  hungry  people  gather  and  eye 
the  food  like  jackals,  eagerly  snatching  at  a  bone  if  one  is 
thrown  to  them.  There  are  multitudes  who  have  only  one 
meal  a  day  for  weeks  together,  and  that  is  a  kind  of  hay- 
seed mush,  like  bran."  Bishop  Thoburn,  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church,  who  has  lived  in  Northern  India  for 
thirty  years,  states  it  as  his  belief  that  one  person  out  of 
every  four  in  India  has  never  had  sufficient  food  to  satisfy 
him  since  he  was  born.^  One  reason  of  this  is  found  in 
that  hopeless  competition  for  a  livelihood  in  which  the 
dense  Indian  population  is  involved,  in  its  pinched  quar- 
ters: the  Aryans,  who  crossed  the  Himalayas  and  entered 
upon  the  fertile  plains  of  the  peninsula,  not  having  been 
crowded  for  room  until  a  relatively  recent  period.  The 
census  has  more  than  doubled  under  British  rule,  through 
checking  famine,  pestilence,  and  intertribal  wars;  but  the 
agricultural  and  industrial  development  of  the  country  has 
not  been  so  rapid  as  the  increase  of  population.  This  con- 
dition is  aggravated  by  occasional  drought.  Hindustan 
depends  on  the  southwest  monsoon,  bringing  equatorial 
moisture;  its  failure  is  famine.  Aside  from  Burmah  and 
Assam  in  the  east,  and  small  areas  near  the  Bengalese  River 

'That  one-sixth  part  of  the  Hindus  go  through  life  with  insuf- 
ficient food,  is  the  statement  of  Sir  William  Hunter. —  Report  of 
the  Tenth  Indian  National  Congress  at  Madras,  1S94,  p.  49. 


iilO  CONTRASTS  IN  POOR  RELIEF. 

mouth,  and  a  narrow  strip  between  Cape  Comorin  and  Bora- 
bay,  India  may  be  without  rain,  one,  two,  or  even  three 
years.  If  there  is  drought  longer  than  one  year,  there  is 
famine.  Irrigation  avails  along  the  upper  Ganges  and  in 
portions  of  Southern  India,  yet  it  has  not  been  practicable 
on  a  large  scale  to  introduce  water  upon  remaining  lands. 
Still,  in  a  country  where  two  crops,  or  even  three,  can  be 
raised  in  a  year,  sometimes  off  the  same  land,  two-thirds  of 
the  men  of  mature  age,  in  a  population  of  nearly  three 
hundred  millions,  think  that  they  have  more  chance  to  live 
comfortably  upon  their  torrid  plains  than  to  migrate  in 
large  numbers, —  from  which  indeed  they  are  practically 
precluded  through  consideration  of  caste  and  immemorial 
custom.  The  government  opens  relief  works,  and  the  char- 
ities of  all  the  world  pour  in,  upon  famine  years.^  The 
greatest  sufferers  are  the  outcasts,  a  fifth  or  a  sixth  of  the 
whole  population ;  and  the  Sudras  next.  And  the  caste  — 
fifteen  millions  strong, —  which  for  four-score  generations 
has  represented  the  intelligence  of  the  Arranger  of  the  Uni- 
verse, and  which  is  held  to  be  by  nature  different  in  kind 
from  the  lowest  of  the  people,  is  not  only  out  of  touch,  but 
with  rare  exceptions  out  of  practical  sympathy  with  those 
upon  whom  poverty  bears  the  hardest.-     There  is  indeed 

^Some  twenty-five  years  ago  or  more,  the  government  spent 
more  than  six  million  pounds  for  relief  in  a  small  area  easily 
reached;  but  soon  after,  through  difficulty  of  communication,  an 
expenditure  of  eleven  millions  could  not  hinder  the  starvation 
of  more  people  than  then  resided  in  London.  Yet,  there  is  more 
water  to  be  had  for  irrigation;  and  it  is  hoped  that  through  a 
humane  policy,  the  drought  districts  will  be  in  some  way  per- 
manently relieved.  However  dreadful  it  all  is  in  detail,  it  is 
incident  to  the  peopling  of  regions  in  advance  of  introducing 
the  means  for  taking  care  of  them,  which  not  unfrequently 
occurs  in  Christendom;  as  in  the  south  of  France  there  were 
fifty  periods  of  famine  in  the  twelfth  century.  (Journal  of  the 
Statistical  Society,  June,  1889,  translation  from  Naymai'ck.) 

^"In  times  of  need,  in  famine,  in  plague,  or  similar  disasters, 
Hinduism  offers  no  help."  "Pass  through  a  plague-stricken  town 
day  after  day,  and  a  dozen  times  a  day,  but  you  will  never  find 


THE  BUDDHISTS.  311 

among  upper  caste  Hindus  a  flourishing  "Society  for  the 
protection  of  the  Cow,"  but  none  to  protect  men  of  lower 
castes.  Meantime,  Christianity  is  caring  for  more  than 
thirty-two  hundred  Hindu  lepers,  seventy-seven  per  cent, 
of  them  by  private  benefaction ;  Christian  homes  have  been 
made  for  more  than  seven  thousand  Hindu  orphans;  and 
medical  attendance  by  Christian  philanthropists  is  now 
given  to  842,600  Hindu  patients  in  2,453,020  treatments 
annually.  Is  not  this  work  silently  revolutionizing  Hindu 
thought  in  many  minds,  preparing  the  way  for  a  more 
rational  treatment  of  disease  and  promoting  the  adoption 
of  Christian  modes  of  charity?  Not  yet,  however,  has 
Brahmanism  extended  like  relief  to  the  Hindus  of  lower 
caste,  or  the  needy  of  other  nationalities. 

That  the  peaceful  religion  of  Gautama  was  so  great  a 
boon  to  Southern  and  Eastern  Asia,  breeding  a  certain 
courteous  fraternity  and  gentle  humanity  in  hundreds  of 
millions  of  men  during  three-score  generations,  is  a  marvel- 
ous tribute  to  the  elements  of  truth  in  that  system ;  and  cer- 
tainly, in  far  away  ages,  had  despairing  paganism  and  the 
rampant  wickedness  of  idolatrous  peoples  continued  to  bear 
sway  until  recent  centuries,  the  sum  total  of  social  wretch- 
edness would  haA^e  been  greater  and  the  grinding  of  poverty 
harder  to  bear.  With  all  the  beautiful  acts  and  words  of 
Gautama  —  decrying  luxurious  living,  putting  contempt 
upon  money,  and  commending  deeds  of  kindness, —  it  is  to 
be  looked  for  that  testimony  should  be  borne  to  the  benefi- 
cent practices  and  open-handedness  of  Buddhist  lands 
to-day,  as  it  is  so  emphatically  stated  by  Fielding  in  his 
delightfully  sympathetic  book  on  the  religion  of  Burmah, 
The  Soul  of  a  People;  the  Burmese  not  being  ambitious 

a  Brahman  priest  visiting  the  sick,  or  comforting  the  bereaved." — 
Missionary  Herald,  Boston. 

It  is,  however,  to  be  said  that  Brahmanism  is  radically  opposed 
to  charitable  organizations  and  institutions,  affirming  that  all 
giving  should  be  in  secret;  and  it  is  claimed  that  of  this  indi- 
vidual secret  giving  there  is  a  great  deal, —  both  as  to  the 
amounts  bestowed  and  the  number  of  the  needy  who  are  relieved. 


312  CONTRASTS  IN  POOR  RELIEF. 

about  laying  up  money,  very  charitable,  and  giving  largely 
for  religious  purposes.^  This  happily  coincides  with  the 
affirmation  of  a  United  States  Consul  in  Siam  a  few  years 
ago,  that  the  monks  support  orphans  and  care  for  the  child- 
less aged,  and  that  they  are  industrious,  faithful  and  loyal 
in  administering  all  charities  which  ancient  usage  has  com- 
mitted to  them.  It  would  be  of  interest,  could  we  know 
more  in  detail  of  Burmah,  whose  population  is  one-half 
more  than  that  of  Sweden  in  an  area  slightly  smaller. 
Sweden  by  law  cares  for  all  who  are  unable  to  support 
themselves,  whether  the  diseased,  the  aged,  or  young  chil- 
dren; maintaining  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty  houses  of 
relief  for  some  fifty  thousand  persons.  In  the  volume  of 
consular  reports  referred  to,  it  is  stated  by  Consul-General 
Merrill,  that  in  Burmah  there  is  no  systematic  method  of 
distributing  alms;  that  the  blind,  lame,  and  deformed  live 
by  begging  on  festal,  funeral,  and  marriage  occasions. 
The  Rt.  Rev.  R.  S.  Copleston,  Bishop  of  Colombo,  states 
that  ordinary  humanity  is  not  to  be  found  in  Buddhist  Cey- 
lon, that  kindness  to  a  person  wounded  by  an  accident  is  a 
rare  thing,  although  the  monks  have  recently  begun  — 
through  the  pressure  of  competing  faiths  —  to  visit  the  pris- 
ons and  hospitals.  Yet  more  than  a  hundred  thousand 
medical  cases  are  treated  in  Buddhist  lands  annually  as  the 
fraternal  gift  of  Christians  in  America,  besides  one-third  as 
many  more  by  other  gifts  from  Christendom. 

The  attitude  of  Japan  toward  the  poor  is  a  model  to  all 
Buddhist  lands,  the  government  having  given  in  1893, 
through  the  central  and  local  authorities  six  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars  for  poor  relief,  besides  the  regular  poor  tax  of 
four  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  more.  The  difference  is 
seen,  however,  between  an  ancient  Buddhist  realm,  the 
beloved  land  of  flowers  amid  her  perfumed  seas,  now  awak- 

'Pp.  117-121.  Second  edition.  London,  1898.  This  charming 
book  would  more  perfectly  command  confidence,  could  there  be 
discerned  in  it  a  somewhat  more  accurate  knowledge  of  Chris- 
tianity in  certain  references  the  author  makes  to  it. 


THE  SUNRISE  KINGDOM.  313 

ening  to  new  philanthropic  life,  and  a  small  commonwealth, 
planted  in  a  virgin  forest  within  a  hundred  years,  Ohio, 
not  one-third  so  large  as  Japan,  and  with  a  population  only 
one-thirtieth  as  large.  This  American  state  gave  to  her 
poor  in  1890  a  larger  sum  than  that  of  the  Japanese  tax ; 
paying  out  two  and  a  half  million  dollars  for  charity, 
including  care  for  the  insane  and  feeble-minded,  the  deaf, 
-dumb  and  blind,  for  sailors  and  soldiers,  asylums  for 
orphans  and  children's  homes.  When  Professor  W.  E. 
Griffis  went  to  Japan  in  1868,  "Hospitals,  orphanages,  asy- 
lums for  the  insane,  for  the  blind,  for  the  dumb,  and  sys- 
tematic famine  relief,  were  practically  unknown ;  now  the 
Christians  of  Japan  have  thirt^'^-one  orphanages,  four  homes 
for  discharged  prisoners,  three  blind  as.ylums,  three  leper 
hospitals,  two  homes  for  the  aged,  five  schools  for  the  Ainos, 
four  free  kindergartens,  ten  industrial  schools,  ten  other 
schools  for  the  poor,  ten  boarding-houses  for  students,  and 
fourteen  hospitals:  that  is  to  say,  a  fraction,  one  two-hun- 
dred-and-fiftieth  part  of  the  population  of  the  empire,  sup- 
port about  one-fourth  of  the  organized  benevolence  of  the 
land,  and  that  fraction  of  people  consists  of  the  Chris- 
tians."^ It  is,  however,  to  be  said  in  regard  to  the  Sunrise 
Kingdom,  that  it  has  almost  ceased  to  be  classified  as  Bud- 
dhist; and  that  in  the  philanthropies,  which  constitute  the 
glory  of  the  western  nations,  it  is  likely  soon  to  win  a  fore- 
most place. 

In  China,  while  Confucianism  is  the  religion  of  the 
learned,  the  common  people  have  a  compound  faith  in  part 
Taoist,  in  part  Confucian,  and  in  part  Buddhist.  There 
are,  therefore,  in  China,  a  great  many  Buddhist  mendicant 
monks,  with  their  temples.  At  Canton,  Bishop  Smith 
found  the  Buddhist  monks  living  in  the  suburbs  near  the 

^Dr.  Griffis  was  the  first  foreigner  called  to  Japan  under  the 
charter  oath  of  the  mikado,  to  assist  in  relaying  the  foundations 
of  the  empire.  As  an  educator  he  was  four  years  at  Nippon,  one 
in  the  interior,  and  three  at  Tokio.  The  citation  from  his  words 
in  the  text,  is  therefore  the  testimony  of  one  in  a  position  to 
know  the  old  as  well  as  the  new. 


314  CONTRASTS  IN  POOR  RELIEF. 

most  pitiable  sights  of  human  want;  living  in  idleness, 
without  humane  interest  or  care  to  relieve  the  wretched.^ 
One  of  the  saddest  sights  in  Pekin  is  that  of  the  houseless 
poor  huddled  together  at  the  Beggars  Bridge,  not  far  from 
the  Imperial  palace  and  near  the  quarters  of  a  great  num- 
ber of  Buddhist  monks.  At  Urga,  the  Buddhist  sacerdotal 
town  of  Northern  Mongolia,  with  a  population  of  seven 
thousand,  there  are  vast  numbers  of  living  and  dying  beg- 
gars. In  that  cold  country  they  winter  in  the  open  market- 
place; when  dead,  their  bodies  are  dragged  to  some  ravine 
and  eaten  by  the  dogs.-  That  an  animal  indifference  to  suf- 
fering on  the  part  of  others  is  a  Chinese  characteristic  is  gen- 
erally agreed  upon  by  Western  residents  in  the  empire ;  yet 
they  cannot  be  worse  than  the  ancient  Greeks,  so  polished, 
so  callous,  and  the  highly  civilized,  hard  hearted  Romans. 
In  the  great  Celestial  cities  there  are  swarms  of  beggars 
everywhere ;  they  go  into  the  shops  armed  with  gongs ;  some- 
times there  is  a  beggar  king,  like  Fuhchan,  whose  business 
it  is  to  keep  the  gongs  away  from  a  shop  at  so  much  a  year. 
"One  cannot  pause  on  the  street  or  in  the  doorway  without 
being  solicited  for  alms  by  the  wretched,  the  blind,  the 
deformed;"  "tramps  and  beggars  are  a  recognized  body, 
and  have  a  certain  place  in  the  affairs  of  this  empire;  they 
are  formed  into  guilds,  with  a  leader,  rules,  and  compacts. '  '^ 
The  Hon.  Chester  Holcombe,  late  Secretary  to  the  United 
States  Legation  at  Pekin,  in  stating  that  there  is  no  public 
care  for  the  poor,  remarks  that  two-thirds  of  the  popula- 
tion would  apply  for  admission  to  almshouses  within  a 
month,  if  any  were  opened  in  which  they  could  be  as  well 
fed  as  in  America,  and  that  if  the  Chinese  prisons  were  as 
good  as  those  in  Europe,  two-thirds  of  the  population  would 

^As  in  India  sanitation  is  practically  unknown  among  the 
natives,  so  it  is  in  China.  The  intellectual  leaders  of  Asia,  the 
Brahmans,  Confucianists,  and  Buddhist  monks,  agree  together  to 
neglect  sanitation  among  seven  hundred  millions  of  people. 

^Gilmour,  Among  the  Mongols,  p.  130. 

^At  Hong  Kong,  and  at  Ningpo.  United  States  Consular 
Reports  on  Vagrancy  and  Puhlic  Charities.    Washington,  1893. 


KEANG-SOO  AND  NEW  YORK.  315 

plan  to  go  to  jail  and  to  stay  there.  While  there  are  no 
taxes  for  the  relief  of  the  poor  as  in  Christian  lands,  the 
emperor  gives  a  small  sum  to  each  province  to  relieve  the 
friendless  aged.  And  in  times  of  scarcity,  says  Dr.  Doo- 
little,  there  are  wealthy  natives  who  sometimes  provide  for 
the  sale  of  rice  to  the  poor  at  a  greatly  reduced  price.  There 
is  a  native  asylum  for  the  ragged  poor  on  the  east  side  of 
Canton,  and  there  are  Cantonese  soup  kitchens  in  winter. 

The  province  of  Keaug-soo,  which  contains  Nankin  and 
two  treaty  ports,  is  not  quite  so  large  as  the  state  of  New 
York,  and  has  more  than  six  times  the  population.  Consul- 
General  Leonard  says  that  there  is  at  Shanghai^  no  general 
legislation,  and  there  are  no  regulations  affecting  begging 
or  dispensing  charity,  that  a  beggar  chief  is  held  responsible 
for  the  conduct  of  beggars  in  a  given  district,  that  on  the 
first  of  each  month  he  collects  from  the  houses  and  shops 
within  his  district  a  voluntary  contribution,  varying  from 
ten  to  fifty  cents,  for  which  he  gives  a  formal  receipt,  to  be 
posted  within  the  house  or  shop,  exempting  the  holder  from 
importunings  for  the  balance  of  the  month.  On  stated  days 
the  chief  doles  out  to  the  beggars  what  he  has  collected, — 
less  his  commission.  This  does  not  interfere  with  begging 
at  city  gates,  temples,  and  public  places.  There  are  various 
refuges  for  the  poor,  but  they  are,  as  a  rule,  supported  by 
guilds  or  private  societies.  There  are  homes  for  the  aged, 
the  insane  incurables,  and  the  blind.  There  are  also  estab- 
lishments for  destitute  children.  In  New  York,  however, 
where  (with  Pennsylvania)  there  are  more  foreign-born 
poor  than  in  any  other  equal  area  in  America,  the  state  has 
established  a  plant  for  country  poor  houses  and  city  alms- 
houses which  in  twenty-three  years  cost  sixty  millions  of 
dollars,  and  the  poor  relief  in  one  year  amounted  to  $3,319,- 
864.     During  a  recent  period  of  twenty-three  years,  the  sys- 

'This  city  has  an  export  and  import  trade  amounting  to 
$225,000,000  a  year;  being  the  emporium  for  the  Yangtse  valley, 
which  contains  a  third  part  of  the  Chinese  population  and  a 
third  part  of  the  resources  of  the  empire. 


316  CONTRASTS  IN  POOR  RELIEF. 

tematic  poor  relief  averaged  more  than  two  million  and  six 
hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year,  it  being  in  the  last  year  of 
the  series  more  than  three  millions  and  a  fourth;  in  the 
relief  plant  the  state  has  invested  more  than  seven  and  three- 
fourths  millions  of  dollars.  Two  hundred  and  seventeen 
charitable  institutions  in  New  York  State  hold  real  and  per- 
sonal property  amounting  to  about  twenty-six  millions; 
their  receipts  in  one  3'ear  were  more  than  seven  millions  and 
a  quarter,  and  they  supported  more  than  fifty-three  thousand 
persons,  of  whom  more  than  half  were  under  sixteen  years 
of  age.^  Beside  these  we  have  seventy-seven  New  York  hos- 
pitals, with  a  plant  costing  $17,483,151 ;  and  net  receipts  for 
1890,  $3,399,502,  of  which  $1,288,316  came  in  private  gifts 
within  the  year.  The  New  York  City  hospitals  have  six 
thousand  beds,  and  there  are  thirty-four  dispensaries,  with 
504,990  free  patients  in  1890.  New  York  City  gives  away 
eight  million  dollars  a  year  in  charity  through  eight  hun- 
dred and  fifty  relief  agencies;-  three  hundred  and  thirty 
institutions  dispense  four  millions,  besides  the  municipal 
charities  of  a  million  and  a  half.  Or,  instead  of  Keang-soo, 
take  the  province  of  Shan-se,  a  little  larger  than  New  York 
State  in  area,  with  a  population  nearly  three  times  as  large ; 
this  commonw^ealth  of  the  Hudson  and  the  Mohawk  is  not 
three  hundred  years  old;  the  Chinese  province  is  of  hoary 
antiquity,  and  it  is  poor  and  often  famine  stricken,  although 
it  has  within  its  doors  the  most  remarkable  resources  in  coal 
and  iron  to  be  found  anywhere  upon  the  globe. 

Subscriptions  in  the  larger  cities  of  China  maintain  por- 
ridge kitchens,  "warm-houses,"  orphanages,  and  homes  for 
widows,  as  reported  by  the  President  of  Tien  Tsin  Univer- 
sity. Consul  Leonard  of  Shanghai  speaks  of  native  hos- 
pitals and  homes  for  the  aged,  as  provided  by  private  gifts 
in  most  cities. 

^Figures  of  1890:  of  these  institutions,  eighty-seven  are  for 
children  and  twenty-five  for  the  aged. 

^There  are  sixteen  hundred  and  twenty-four  pliilanthropic 
organizations  in  New  York  City,  as  listed  by  the  Charity  Organ- 
ization Society. 


HANKOW   AND   ST.    PETERSBURG.  BIT 

Missionary  Hill  reports  thirty-five  hundred  and  eighty- 
three  subscribers  in  Hankow  who  support  six  institutions 
by  monthly  payments ;  that  one  institution  has  an  income  of 
forty-three  hundred  dollars  a  year,  paid  in  by  five  hundred 
and  eighty-three  subscribers ;  and  that  sixty-five  tons  of  rice 
were  given  by  native  charity  to  the  poor  of  Ilaukow  in  1892. 
This  missionary  believes  with  Consul  Leonard  that  the  other 
great  cities  of  China  maintain,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent, 
similar  charities.  Hankow  would,  however,  have  given  six- 
ty-four times  as  much  if  it  had  been  a  Christian  city,  and 
had  been  as  benevolent  as  St.  Petersburg.  The  Russian  city 
is  but  one-third  larger  in  population,  yet  their  charities  cost 
$6,680,000  in  1889 ;  there  being  in  the  city  not  less  than  one 
hundred  and  forty-six  asylums  for  children,  ninety  for 
unfortunate  adults,  and  fifty-five  hospitals. 

"Were  the  Celestial  Empire  as  systematic  and  generous  in 
its  charities  as  the  United  States,  there  should  be  two  hun- 
dred native  blind  asylums  in  China  to-day  and  more  than 
nine  hundred  hospitals  for  insane  patients.  Were  Confu- 
cian China,  were  Taoist  and  Buddhist  China,  as  self-helpful 
as  Christian  America,  there  w^ould  be  to-day  only  five  per- 
sons to  each  thousand  in  the  empire  enrolled  among  the 
dependent  classes.  Such  facts  must  be  known  to  well-to-do 
Confucianists,  who  are  among  the  most  capable  men  in  the 
world  in  matters  Of  thrift,  but  who  have  been  so  occupied  as 
to  give  less  attention  to  social  problems  than  if  studies  in 
social  science,  history,  ethics,  civics  and  political  economy 
had  earlier  gained  an  honored  place  in  civil  service  examina- 
tions. The  most  progressive  merchants,  scholars  and  states- 
men in  China  welcome  such  Western  philanthropists 
as  help  solve  their  social  problems.^  Christianity  has 
planted  thirty-two  medical  schools,  and  sixty  hospitals  are 

4t  scarcely  need  be  said  that  European  residents  in  the  treaty 
ports  speak  of  the  average  Chinese  merchant  as  comparing  well 
with  men  of  his  class  in  other  parts  of  the  world,  as  to  his 
neighborly  good  will.  That  he  is  generously  disposed  is  appar- 
ent; and  when  the  intellectual  acumen  of  China  is  given  to  social 
studies,  a  new  era  will  open  in  Chinese  philanthropy. 


318  CONTRASTS  IN  POOR  RELIEF, 

maintained.  In  the  missionary  life  of  Dr.  Kerr  of  the 
Presbyterian  mission  in  China,  over  seven  hundred  and 
eighty  thousand  patients  have  been  treated,  with  more  than 
forty-eight  thousand  surgical  cases.  More  than  a  million 
and  a  half  patients  now  annually  receive  Christian  care.  It 
is  a  matter  of  much  interest  that  the  Empress  Dowager  has 
recently  given  $7,500  to  the  new  Union  Medical  College; 
her  attention  to  western  medical  practice  having  been  for 
some  years  secured  by  the  excellent  service  of  the  London 
Mission  Hospital  corps  in  the  palace. 

There  seems  to  be  some  doubt  whether  Islam,  although 
it  is  intrenched  in  the  northern  and  western  provinces  of 
China,  will  ever  effectively  help  solve  the  local  poverty 
problem;  neither  in  relative  point  of  numbers  nor  positive 
moral  influence  has  it  greatly  affected  the  bulk  of  the  Celes- 
tial population.  Yet  Islam  is  throughout  the  world 
emphatically  a  religion  of  almsgiving.  Its  fundamental 
relation  to  the  system  appears  in  the  very  earliest  chapters 
of  the  Koran.  Of  the  first  disciples  many  were  poor,  says 
Macdonald,  and  they  were  better  cared  for  than  poor  Chris- 
tians of  the  same  period;  and  if  their  charities  have  been 
unorganized,  system  too  is  wanting,  in  many  other  things 
Moslem;  yet  if  beggars  have  always  abounded,  there  has 
been  relatively  little  want  in  Isiam.^  Very  little,  when  com- 
pared with  Confucian  peoples  and  the  castes  of  India.  This 
Moslem  almsgiving  was  once  compulsory,  now  it  is  expected 
that,  of  the  faithful,  every  one  will  give  a  fortieth  part  of 
his  yearly  income.-  The  gifts  are  for  the  benefit  of  Mos- 
lems only.^  In  the  empire  the  collection  is  made  by  the 
Turkish  government.  This  is  not,  however,  needed  in 
India,  where  the  Mussulman  care  well  for  their  poor.*     In 

^There  are  no  paupers,  says  Eliot  {Turkey  in  Europe,  by  Odys- 
seus, p.  190,  London,  1900) ;  giving  alms  is  not  a  mere  theoretical 
obligation,  but  an  essential  religious  duty  really  discharged. 

-Studies  in  a  Mosque,  by  Stanley  Lane  Poole,  p.  95. 

^Sura  IX,  60. 

*The  Faith  of  Islam.    Edward  Sell,  p.  222. 


ISLAM.  319 

the  Turkish  empire,  there  are  individual  givers  who  are 
most  generously  disposed.  An  Irish  famine  has  been 
relieved  by  Turkey  as  well  as  by  America.  Of  the  varied 
requirements  of  Islam  —  the  bath,  the  creed,  prayer,  pil- 
grimage and  almsgiving, —  the  latter  is  the  only  one  affect- 
ing the  condition  of  others ;  so  that,  if  the  religion  had  been 
to  an  extraordinary  degree  altruistic,  would  not  much  more 
have  been  made  of  it  by  the  very  capable  men  who  have 
managed  its  affairs  during  more  than  thirty-eight  genera- 
tions? 

The  population  of  the  Turkish  empire  to-day  is  not  very 
far  from  that  of  Great  Britain.  The  annual  charitable  con- 
tributions of  the  empire,  outside  of  Constantinople,  ought 
to  be  fifteen  million  dollars  every  year,  were  Islam  as 
thoughtful  of  the  poor  as  British  Christianity.  Yet  in  all 
Asia  ]Minor  there  are  no  public  institutions  for  the  sup- 
port of  the  poor  or  the  unfortunate;  there  are  no  work- 
houses, no  asylums  for  the  insane,  the  blind,  the  deaf  and 
dumb,  or  the  idiotic,  although  the  larger  cities  maintain 
certain  hospitals  by  subscription.^  If  Constantinople  were 
as  helpful  to  the  poor  as  London,  in  proportion  to  popula- 
tion, the  city  on  the  Bosphorus  should  have  some  five  hun- 
dred and  fifty  charities,  a  hundred  and  seventy  of  which 
should  disburse  annually  more  than  three  and  a  half  million 
dollars :  among  other  things  there  should  be  twenty-five  hos- 
pitals, nineteen  charities  for  the  blind,  twenty-four  orphan- 
ages, and  twenty-one  industrial  schools.  The  population 
of  Pennsylvania  is  not  far  from  that  of  Turkey  in  Europe : 
were  Islam  as  philanthropic  as  Pennsylvanian  Christianity, 
there  should  be  to-day,  scattered  throughout  European 
Turkey,  not  fewer  than  ninety  hospitals  at  a  cost,  for  the 
plant,  of  some  twenty  millions  of  dollars;  and  eighty- 
eight  institutions  for  the  aged,  and  for  needy  children ;  and 
the  annual  expenditure  for  the  dependent  classes  should  be 
some   six   millions  of  dollars.     Were   Islam   a  match   for 

^United  States  Consular  Reports,  Labor  in  Foreign  Countries, 
p.  267,  Vol.  3. 


320  CHRISTIANITY  AND  POOR  RELIEF. 

Christianity  in  earing  for  the  siek  poor,  there  should  be  a 
quarter  of  a  million  cases  of  free  medical  attendance  annu- 
ally in  Constantinople,  as  in  Boston,  a  smaller  city.  Chris- 
tianity to-day  is  giving  free  medical  treatment  to  more  than 
a  third  of  a  million  eases  annually  in  the  Turkish  empire. 
In  further  contrast  between  Christian  and  non-Christian 
peoples  in  their  relation  to  poverty,  note  the  slow  develop- 
ment of  the  altruistic  attitude  of  Christendom.  Inheriting- 
the  Hebrew  Sacred  Books  with  their  ideas  of  a  Moral  Gov- 
ernor, a  Suffering  Messiah,  a  divine  Iringdom,  and  other 
fundamental  tenets,  Christianity  inherited  also  the  Hebrew 
idea  of  providing  generously  for  the  poor.  The  Jew  dedi- 
cated to  God  not  only  a  tenth,  but  with  his  ecclesiastical 
and  civic  tax,  his  annual  altruistic  payment  amounted  to> 
nearly  a  third  of  his  income.  That  the  individual  should 
live  for  society  was  fundamental  in  the  Hebrew  common- 
wealth. Orphans  were  cared  for  by  system,  and  a  dowry 
was  provided  for  female  orphans.  Christianity,  as  to  char- 
ity, learned  nothing  from  the  Roman  Empire:  although 
three  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  men  fed  upon  the 
public  corn,  the  tribute  of  conquered  peoples,  in  the  time 
of  Julius  Csesar;  and  money  was  poured  out  of  plethorie 
purses  when  the  Fidenten  theatre  fell,  and  when  Pompeii 
was  buried ;  yet  there  was  no  system  in  caring  for  the  poor, 
as  such,  till  Christianity  organized  the  work.^  When 
Julian,  the  apostate,  sought  to  revive  the  heathen  cult,  and 
exhorted  a  debauched  pagan  priesthood  to  go  to  preaching- 
like the  Christians,  he  also  announced  to  his  empire  that 
their  mythology  could  never  recover  itself  and  compete  with. 
Christianity,  unless  those  who  believed  it  should  take  better 
care  of  the  poor  by  the  erection  of  almshouses  and  hospi- 
tals.    In  the  time  of  Justinian,  it  appears  from  the  Insti- 

^Uhlhorn's  Christian  Charity  in  the  Ancient  Church,  pp.  4,  5. 
New  York,   1883. 

Athens  was  the  only  community  known  to  classical  history  in 
which  there  was  systematic  municipal  or  organized  charity;  the 
lame,  the  halt,  the  blind,  whose  property  was  less  than  a  specified 
sum,  receiving  a  daily  portion  from  the  public  treasury. 


EARLY   MUNICIPAL  CHARITIES.  321 

tides  that  the  Christians  had  established  charitable  homes 
for  the  aged,  for  widows,  for  foundlings,  for  orphans,  for 
strangers,  and  for  the  sick.  It  is  a  matter  of  history,  that, 
from  the  time  of  our  Lord  till  near  the  close  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  the  Church  alone  was  the  almoner  of  God's  bread- 
giving  to  the  poor.  There  are  certain  watermarks  of  Chris- 
tian activity  in  behalf  of  the  unfortunate,  found  in  the 
records  of  the  councils  and  in  the  general  laws  of  the 
Church,  which  testify,  in  the  absence  of  statistics,  to  the 
point. 

It  was,  relatively,  not  long  ago  that  the  municipalities 
of  Europe  became  so  Christianized  as  to  undertake  the  work 
borne  so  long  by  the  Church ;  this  is  the  general  statement, 
although  there  were  exceptions,  like  Norway  and  Sweden, 
which  cared  for  the  poor  by  some  system  even  before  the 
advent  of  Christianity.  The  action  of  the  state  in  England, 
first  traceable  in  the  ninth  and  early  in  the  fourteenth  cen- 
turies, did  not  get  fair  footing  till  the  time  of  Elizabeth, 
and  it  was  almost  a  hundred  years  later  in  France,  under 
Louis  XIV. 

It  is  impossible  even  to  allude  to  the  fascinating  literature 
of  poor  relief  in  Austria,  in  Bavaria,  in  Belgium,  in  the  low- 
lying  windmill  lands,  and  in  the  world  of  Olaf  and  the 
Vikings.  So  great  is  the  contrast  to  medieval  Europe  and 
the  pagan  centuries,  that  Liefde's  Charities  of  Europe  reads 
like  an  Arabian  tale;  and  faces,  like  those  of  Immanuel 
Wiehern  and  Father  Zellar,  appear  to  us  as  glorified  by 
their  self-devotement.  The  story  is  every  way  more  won- 
derful than  that  of  the  knights  of  chivalry.  The  feudal 
lords  of  charity  during  some  generations  past  in  Europe 
are  deserving  of  the  fealty  of  all  mankind.  In  France, 
hospitals  in  great  numbers  have  been  svipported  throughout 
the  nation  since  the  time  of  the  Crusades.  The  Chinese 
province  of  Kwang-tung,  in  which  are  the  treaty  ports  of 
Canton  and  Swatow,  is  about  two-fifths  the  size  of  France, 
and  in  1886  the  difference  in  population  was  less  than  half 
a  million.  Kwang-tung  is  one  of  the  most  productive  of  the 
21 


322  CHRISTIANITY  AND  POOR  RELIEF. 

Chinese  provinces,  with  a  vast  output  of  silk,  tea,  coal  and 
iron.  If  the  doctrine  of  Confucius  were  as  productive  of 
humanitarian  good  works  as  Christianity  is  in  France,  we 
should  find  that  single  province  of  China  paying  $2,260,000 
a  year  for  the  relief  of  neglected  childhood,  and  $34,965,000 
a  year  for  the  direct  relief  of  the  poor,  supporting  eleven 
hundred  and  ninety  hospitals  and  hospital  homes,  and 
employing  a  hospital  force,  with  assistants  and  servants,  of 
more  than  thirty  thousand  persons.^ 

Italy  in  1886,  had  three-fourths  of  a  million  people 
less  than  the  Northwest  Provinces  of  India  in  1872.  If 
the  sociological  results  of  Brahmanism  were  as  good  as 
Christianity  produces,  there  would  be  in  Northern  Hindu- 
stan, to-day,  at  least  fifteen  thousand  charitable  institutions 
(other  than  educational  or  religious),  long  since  founded  by 
the  Hindus,  and  now  sustained  by  them  at  an  expense  of 
$16,000,000  a  year.  In  1880,  the  gross  investment  of  the 
Italian  charities,  in  real  estate  and  cash  capital,  was  $359,- 
217,254;  of  which  $310,616,269  was  for  philanthropic  pur- 
poses not  educational  or  religious.  The  sum  total  was  in- 
creased thirty -three  millions  of  dollars  in  ten  years  follow- 
ing, and  must,  at  this  time,  somewhat  exceed  four  hundred 
millions  of  dollars.  How  intensely  alive  is  the  Italian  spirit 
of  Christian  charity  is  shown  by  the  increase  in  the  amount 
given  to  create  new  foundations.  About  three  and  one- 
third  millions  of  dollars  a  year  were  given  during  the 
decade  prior  to  1892.  Of  these  new  funds,  nearly  twelve 
millions  of  dollars  were  for  hospitals,  four  millions  for  poor- 
houses,  three  millions  and  three-fourths  for  day  nurseries 
and  kindergartens,  and  more  than  five  millions  and  a  quar- 
ter to  institutions  for  distributing  alms.  In  England  and 
"Wales  twenty-two  persons  out  of  a  thousand  receive  aid; 
in  Italy  twentj^-six  out  of  a  thousand.- 

'The  figures  upon  French  charities  are  found  in  the  report  to 
the  International  Congress,  Chica,go,  1893,  presented  by  the  eru- 
dite M.  Herbert  Valleroux. 

^IMd;  in  the  peculiarly  satisfactory  report  of  Egisto  Rossi. 


ELBERFELD.  323 

About  half  a  century  ago,  Daniel  von  der  Heydt,  a  Ger- 
man banker  in  Elberfeld,  invented  a  system  for  the  care  of 
the  poor,  which  diminished  the  local  paupers  from  four 
thousand  to  ten  hundred  and  sixty-two,  during  the  time  in 
which  the  city  increased  from  fifty  thousand  to  seventy-one 
thousand,  and  it  effected  a  saving  to  the  city  of  some  $25,000 
a  year.  By  this  system  every  four  paupers  are  classed  in  a 
precinct  wath  an  overseer,  whose  acceptance  of  the  office 
may  be  legally  enforced;  it  is  his  business  to  see  the  four 
once  in  two  weeks.  He  records  their  circumstances,  he  is 
their  friend  and  advisor,  he  requires  their  good  behavior, 
and  promptly  brings  them  before  the  court  if  they  are 
vicious  and  idle.  The  precincts  are  united  in  districts. 
The  precinct  overseers  and  their  district  chairman  decide 
what  aid  shall  be  given  to  each  man 's  four  paupers  for  two 
weeks  to  come,  and  only  for  that  time;  every  case  coming 
up  new  once  in  two  weeks.  There  is  then  a  Central  Admin- 
istrative Board,  in  which  the  municipal  government  is  rep- 
resented; they  oversee  the  districts.  There  is,  besides,  a 
Business  Department,  which  maintains  a  bookkeeping  sys- 
tem, recording  all  the  facts  about  each  pauper,  and  the 
relief  given.  This  department  pays  out  all  the  money  and 
gives  all  orders  for  supplies.  The  officers  are  unpaid, 
except  so  far  as  a  few  are  required  to  give  all  their  time  to 
these  duties,  and  that  for  considerable  length  of  time.  This 
system,  or  such  modification  of  it  as  may  be  requisite  to 
suit  local  conditions,  has  been  widely  adopted  in  the  princi- 
pal cities  throughout  Germany.  In  Hamburg,  with  six 
hundred  thousand  population,  there  are  fifteen  hundred 
precinct  overseers,  ninety  district  chairmen,  nine  circuit 
chairmen,  a  central  board  of  twenty  members,  and  a  busi- 
ness department  of  sixty  officials  and  twenty  clerks :  a  total 
force  of  sixteen  hundred  and  ninety-nine  persons.  In 
Dresden,  with  a  population  of  276,522  (1890),  there  are 
four  hundred  overseers  for  fifteen  hundred  and  eighty- 
three  paupers.  There  is  a  society  of  four  thousand  mem- 
bers to  prevent  pauperism  and  street  begging;  they  have  a 


324  CHRISTIANITY  AND  POOR  RELIEF. 

central  office  to  which  all  applicants  for  relief  can  be 
referred,  and  where  there  is  kept  full  information  concern- 
ing destitute  persons.  There  is  also  an  institute  for  volun- 
tary helpers,  and  a  large  body  of  women  have  entered  into 
the  work.  A  rent  savings-bank  has  been  established ;  and 
workshops  opened  for  those  needing  employment;  and 
houses  have  been  built  for  free  rental  to  needy  people. 
There  is  also  in  Dresden  a  Central  Bureau  for  Poor  Relief 
and  Charity,  with  which  more  than  fifty  local  benevolent 
societies  cooperate.  This  Central  Charitable  Bureau  has 
been  also  introduced  into  several  large  German  cities.^  By 
the  law  of  the  empire,  all  citizens  are  maintained  who  need 
it.  Through  the  scientific  administration  of  charity,  Berlin 
has  in  effect  banished  poverty,  having  no  slums,  no  starv- 
ing or  shelterless  people,  and  no  beggars.  The  German 
emperor  is  the  leader  in  supplying  work  and  relief,  in  estab- 
lishing popular  recreation-gardens,  pension  funds  for  the 
aged,  insurance  for  working  men,  and  asylums. 

A  general  movement  like  that  of  Elberfeld,  in  extending 
throughout  a  great  Christian  empire,  marks  a  new  era.  The 
energies  of  the  benevolently  disposed  in  Christendom  have 
been  so  concentrated,  for  many  ages,  upon  the  great  ques- 
tions of  human  rights,  of  civil  and  religious  liberty,  of 
slaveiy,  of  peace  and  war,  and  the  agitations  of  social 
reforms  upon  a  great  scale,  that  there  has  been  little  leisure 
for  considering  the  problem  of  poverty  except  in  its  rela- 
tion to  momentous  present  questions  in  debate;  but  the 
present  possibility  of  finding  one  business  man  to  act  as  a 
good  Samaritan  for  four  families  of  poor  neighbors,  and  to 
do  this  in  the  length  and  breadth  of  one  of  the  mightiest 
political  powers  in  the  Avorld,  and  to  do  it  during  a  long 
term  of  years,  indicates  that  Christendom  has  indeed  set  to 

^These  facts  are  compiled  from  valuable  papers  by  Dr.  Mun- 
sterburg  of  Hamburg,  by  Dr.  Thoma  of  Freiburg  by  L.  F.  Sey- 
ffardt,  and  by  Dr.  Victor  Bohmert,  chief  of  the  Royal  Saxon 
Statistical  Bureau,  Dresden,  pp.  191-209.  Report  of  International 
Congress  of  Charities.     Chicago,  1893. 


"considering"  the  poor.  325 

itself  the  task  of  solving  the  poverty  problem.  The  devel- 
opment of  Social  Science  Associations,  the  covering  of  the 
great  Christian  nations  with  a  network  of  Charity  Organ- 
ization Societies,  the  rapid  growth  of  the  University  Settle- 
ment work,  indicate  that  the  trained  intellectual  force  of 
Christendom  is  now  being  brought  to  bear  for  the  system- 
atic relief  of  the  improvable  poor.  Great  bodies  of  phil- 
anthropists throughout  the  most  progressive  portions  of 
Christendom,  now  meet  statedly  to  discuss  the  prevention 
of  pauperism,  what  to  do  with  the  children  of  the  poor,  the 
establishing  of  homes  for  the  homeless,  industrial  training, 
.and  whatever  relates  to  juvenile  crime,  vagrancy,  reforma- 
tory training  and  discipline,  and  the  upbuilding  of  schools 
for  nursing  and  hospital  service.  The  personal  sympa- 
thetic identification  of  the  most  intelligent  and  most  thrifty 
with  those  who  lack  knowledge  as  well  as  bread,  and  doing 
it  steadfastly  throughout  the  year  in  very  extended  dis- 
tricts; and  the  employment  of  experts  for  the  study  of  the 
causes  of  poverty  and  social  distress;  and  the  attempt  to 
put  the  improvable  poor  into  a  permanent  condition  of  self- 
support  by  some  plan  carefully  thought  out  by  practical 
people  accustomed  to  do  business; — these  are  the  aims 
sought  through  the  cooperation  of  all  charitable  agencies, 
whether  private,  ecclesiastical,  corporate,  or  municipal;  so 
bringing  the  rich  and  the  poor  into  mutually  helpful  rela- 
tions,—  all  the  poor  who  are  willing  to  work  being  thought- 
fully sought  out,  and  those  unable,  but  willing  to  work, 
carefully  cared  for.  The  nineteenth  century  was  the  work- 
ingmen's  century,  said  Gladstone;  it  was  also  the  century  of 
the  hopeless  poor. 

There  is  no  finer  illustration  of  the  trend  of  Christian 
charity  in  the  new  age  than  that  which  has  appeared  in  the 
Teutoburger  Forest,  relating  as  it  does  to  a  purely  agricul- 
tural district.  It  will  interest  every  one  who  has  seen  Thur- 
man's  magnificent  picture  of  the  Eeturn  of  the  Victorious 
Germans  from  this  ancient  realm  of  the  wood.  It  is  not 
many  ages  ago  that  this  part  of  Westphalia  was  peopled 


326  CHRISTIANITY  AND  POOR  RELIEF. 

by  the  most  competent  savages  on  the  globe,  who  generation 
after  generation  contended  fiercely  against  Christianity. 
In  the  Ravensberger  land  is  Bethel,  whose  map  is  dotted 
with  Bible  names  which  mark  the  cottages  of  mercy. 
Heermann,  the  blind  peasant,  introduced  here  the  forces 
which  promoted  the  spiritual  life  of  his  neighbors.  Hither 
came  Pastor  von  Bodelschwingle,  who  made  a  practical 
application  of  Christianity  to  this  densely  peopled  agricul- 
tural district.  Here  upon  a  hill  in  the  beech  wood  we  find 
a  Colony  of  Epileptics.  It  is  no  asylum  or  charitable  insti- 
tution, but  a  collection  of  cottages  for  fourteen  hundred 
afflicted  people,  who  have  an  opportunity  to  earn  their  live- 
lihood by  a  great  variety  of  industries,  by  such  work  as  they 
can  do  between  the  attacks  of  the  disorder  that  brings  them 
here.  And  their  living  is  pieced  out  by  thousands  of  Chris- 
tian farmers,  who  delight  to  load  up  their  great  German 
w^agons  with  food  for  God's  sick  folk.  And  here,  as  natu- 
rally as  the  springing  up  of  the  wheat,  we  find  concomitant 
charities.  Not  to  speak  of  the  Labor  Colony,  and  the  Asso- 
ciation Workman's  Home,  experiments  in  practical  soci- 
ology, we  see,  in  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  the  epilep- 
tic cottages,  the  Westphalia  Bi-otherhood  of  Nazareth,  a 
house  of  trained  nurses  who  are  ready  to  serve  God  at  the 
sick  bed.  The  men,  too,  are  specially  fitted  to  engage  in  a 
variety  of  other  services.  They  are  self-devoted  to  lives  of 
usefulness,  living  for  others,  and  not  hired  to  do  it.  Here, 
too,  is  Sarepta,  the  Westphalian  INIother-house  for  training 
Deaconesses.  They  become  experts  at  nursing,  and  in 
various  forms  of  parochial  helpfulness;  five  hundred  of 
them  having  gone  from  this  house  to  Africa,  America, 
Holland  or  France.^  In  this  German  Holy  Land,  there  is 
scarcely  a  family  that  has  not  a  son  or  a  daughter  who  has 

'There  are  in  Germany  fifty  houses  of  deaconesses,  comprising 
ten  thousand  ministering  women,  all  trained  to  do  nursing,  and 
to  be  useful  in  various  forms  of  parochial  or  educational  service. 
Of  the  Moravian  Deaconess  House  at  Emmaus,  their  workers 
are  in  the  Himalayas,  in  Syria,  and  in  Central  America. 


WESTPHALIA.  327 

gone  forth  to  become  a  ministering  one  in  some  form  of  lay 
service ;  not  to  make  money  by,  but  to  follow  a  calling  from 
God.  Many  of  them  have  become  foreign  missionaries,  and 
those  who  do  not  go  deny  themselves  to  support  those  who 
do  go.  A  peasant  girl  has  been  known  to  walk  ten  miles  to 
a  missionary  meeting,  and  fast  for  the  day  to  save  half  a 
penny  for  the  contribution  box.  This  happy  land  is  peo- 
pled by  musical  hosts,  with  all  kinds  of  instruments  and 
well-attuned  voices ;  they  are  practicing  to  join  the  celes- 
tial choirs.  They  rise  at  two  o'clock" of  a  summer  morning 
and  journey  from  distant  farm  lands,  coming  up  to  Bethel 
with  hundreds  of  instruments,  and  their  singing  is  like  lis- 
tening to  the  angels  of  God,  so  simple  it  is,  and  so  heart- 
felt, and  as  unassuming  as  the  caroling  of  birds.  And  they 
pay  as  well  as  pray.  Here,  a  little  while  ago,  they  raised 
two  thousand  pounds  in  a  fortnight  for  a  Baby  Castle  to 
house  a  hundred  epileptic  little  girls.  The  money  w-as 
given  in  pennies,  four  hundred  thousand  pennies  were 
brought  in,  each  one  a  thank-offering  for  one  healthy  child 
of  the  Ravensberger  stock,  and  sometimes  two  pennies  for 
a  child  now  gathered  to  the  Heavenly  fold.  This  shows  the 
power  of  Christianity  to-day ;  and,  in  respect  to  the  history 
of  Germany,  it  is  related  to  the  baptism  of  Wittekind  at  the 
gate  of  Westphalia.^ 

The  Chinese  pro^nnce  of  Chihli  is  the  one  in  which  Pekin 
is  situated.  It  is  six  hundred  and  twenty-nine  square  miles 
larger  than  England  and  Wales.  The  population  is  about 
the  same.  If  the  outcome  of  Confucianism  is  as  good  as 
that  of  Christianity,  then  there  must  be  to-day  some  forty 
millions  of  dollars  a  year  given  to  relieve  the  poor  in  Chihli, 
of  which  seven-eighths  is  paid  by  the  government,  and  the 
remainder  by  endowed  charities  representing  (at  four  per 
cent.)  a  capital  of  $113,386,700  laid  by  for  the  perpetual 
use  of  the  poor.  If  Chihli  cannot  make  this  showing,  Con- 
fucianism is  not  so  good  as  Christianity,  as  a  humanitarian 
scheme. 

^Consult  A  Colony  of  Mercy.     J.  Sutter.     New  York,  1893. 


328  THE   CHARITIES  OF  GREAT  BRITAIN. 

It  is  estimated  that  the  total  amount  raised  in  England 
annually  for  charitable  purposes  is  not  less  than  fifty  rail- 
lions  of  dollars,  seven-tenths  of  it  being  London  charity.^ 
The  annual  cost  of  the  London  charities,  says  Mr.  Arnold 
White,^  is  more  than  that  of  the  Swedish  government, —  the 
king  and  his  court,  the  army  and  navy,  the  school  system, 
the  Church,  and  the  interest  on  the  Swedish  debt.  The 
mere  index  to  the  Charities  Register  and  Digest  of  London 
comprises  seventy-seven  closely  printed  pages  in  double 
columns,  and  there  are  eight  hundred  and  twenty-three 
pages  of  descriptive  text.  Within  a  small  area,  not  far 
from  the  size  of  Michigan,  and  with  fifteen  times  as  many 
people  in  it,  there  are  not  less  than  twenty-eight  hundred 
and  fifty-three  charitable  institutions,  besides  nine  hundred 
and  thirty-four  small  endowed  charities  in  the  parishes  of 
London.  In  the  analysis  of  3,283  London  charities,  there 
are  found: — for  relief  in  physical  affliction,  234  charities 
(115  of  which  are  for  the  blind)  ;  for  relief  in  sickness,  522; 
for  relief  in  distress,  1,011  (including  143  orphanages,  452 
other  homes  for  children,  177  charities  for  the  aged)  ;  for 
relief  in  moral  infirmity  (including  694  for  women),  908; 
to  befriend  young  women,  405;  to  befriend  working  men 
and  women,  young  men  and  lads,  194;  to  protect  animals, 
nine.  Free  medical  consultation  is  annually  given  by  the 
London  dispensaries  to  more  than  a  million  patients,  if  not 
indeed  practically  to  all  the  sick  poor  in  the  city  as  occa- 
sion may  require.^  Half  a  million  London  patients  are 
annually  furnished  an  average  of  thirty-one  days  of  the 

^Mr.  Frederick  Martin,  and  Edward  Dennison. 

^ProMems  of  a  Great  City,  p.  245.  London,  1887.  Upon  pp. 
257,  258,  are  tables  relating  to  a  thousand  and  thirteen  charities 
with  an  annual  disbursement  of  twenty-one  and  a  half  million 
dollars. 

^There  were  from  four-fifths  of  a  million  to  a  million  patients 
annually,  with  thirty-five  dispensaries,  about  fifty-five  years  ago 
in  a  smaller  London. —  British  Encyclopedia.  There  are  now 
forty-one  free  dispensaries,  and  forty-four  with  many  free 
patients. 


THE  CHURCH,  NOBILITY,  AND  FREE  CHURCHES.  329 

best  medical  care  in  four  hundred  and  ninety-six  hospitals.^ 
This  English  care  for  the  poor  pertains  to  a  small  area. 
Japan  is  two  and  a  half  times  larger  than  England  and 
Wales,  with  a  population  a  third  larger:  with  forty  thou- 
•sand  monks  as  leaders,  what  commensurate  charities  can 
Buddhism  show?  India  is  twenty-three  times  larger,  with 
nine  times  the  population,  what  has  Brahmanism  done  for 
the  poor  in  thirty-five  hundred  years?  Turkey  is  larger  in 
population,  what  has  Islam  done  for  the  poor  to  match  Eng- 
lish philanthropy? 

Three  features  are  notable :  the  share  wrought  by  the 
English  Church,  by  the  Nobility,  and  by  the  Women  of  the 
nation.  The  work  of  the  Church  is  united,  compacted, 
easily  handled.  Its  efficient  workers  busy  themselves  in 
helping  the  cooks,  the  laundry  and  dairy  women  of  the 
north  of  England ;  in  providing  homes  for  the  waifs  and  the 
strays  of  society;  in  reclaiming  tramps,  criminals,  inebri- 
ates ;  in  rendering  help  to  the  deserving  unemployed,  and  in 
furnishing  a  score  of  homes  for  them  in  advanced  life;  in 
caring  for  more  than  three  thousand  hopeless  women 
picked  up  from  the  street  within  one  year ;  in  systematic 
work  in  preparing  whatever  will  divert  the  weariness  of 
hospital  patients,  and  make  life  more  bearable  to  the 
inmates  of  workhouses.  The  three  great  societies  for 
women  and  girls  are  found  in  aU  the  larger  parishes  in  the 
kingdom.  In  twenty-five  recent  years,  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land gave  nineteen  millions  and  ninety-one  thousands  of 
dollars  to  maintain  nursing  institutions,  cottage  hospitals, 
convalescent  homes,  orphanages,  sisterhoods,  deaconess  insti- 
tutes, reformatories,  penitentiaries,  and  as  gifts  on  Hospital 
Sunday.  Fifty-three  societies  are  reported  in  aid  of 
various  forms  of  domestic  humanitarian  service.  Similar 
work  is  conducted  by  the  Nonconformist  bodies,  which  are 
so  strongly  intrenched  in  the  history  of  their  country,  con- 
nected as  they  have  been  with  great  providential  move- 
ments which  have   been   of   definite   good  to  the  nation. 

^Mulhall. 


330  THE   CHARITIES  OF  GREAT  BRITAIN. 

Their  devotion,  their  intensity  of  life,  their  practical  work- 
ing at  the  problem  of  the  age  —  what  to  do  with  the 
improvable  and  the  unimprovable  poor, —  rally  to  their  sup- 
port a  vast  army  of  philanthropic  women.  This  great 
movement  is  but  the  intensifying  of  the  traditions  of  every 
noble  home  in  England,  which  have  never  failed  in  dealing 
with  the  poor  in  great  liberality.  The  castles  and  halls  of 
England  still  maintain  hospitable  rites  that  have  never  been 
omitted  since  the  feudal  ages.  By  force  of  hoary  centuries 
of  custom  the  hungry  are  fed,  the  ragged  are  clothed,  and 
the  sick  neighbors  are  nursed.  This  universally  recognized 
obligation  goes  far  to  create  a  basis  for  a  generous  philan- 
thropic service  in  accordance  with  modern  scientific  meth- 
ods. And  there  is  never  a  lack  of  titled  persons  well  known 
throughout  the  kingdom  as  spiritually  minded,  devout  and 
thoughtful  philanthropists,  to  take  the  initiative  in  any 
new  humanitarian  movement  that  is  commended  by  reli- 
gious authority.  Frances  Power  Cobbe  once  testified  that 
nine  women  out  of  ten  of  the  better  class  in  England  would, 
if  they  had  the  choice,  oftener  speak  of  duty  and  religion 
than  on  any  other  themes.  And,  says  Miss  Louisa  M.  Hub- 
bard,^ it  is  an  immemorial  custom  for  women  of  wealth  and 
leisure  to  devote  a  considerable  portion  of  their  time  and 
substance  to  the  benefit  of  their  needier  neighbors.  As  an 
illustration,  the  Needlework  Guild  enrolls  seven  thousand 
women,  mostly  of  the  upper  classes,  who  agree  together  to 
make  garments  for  the  needy.  The  Mildmay  Association 
of  Women  "Workers  in  London  is  composed  of  fourteen  hun- 
dred deaconesses  without  vows,  who  give  their  entire  time 
to  work  among  the  poor.  They  sustain  twelve  principal 
missions,  with  nearly  a  score  of  special  forms  of  service. 
Nor  is  this  Association  a  beggar  at  the  doors  of  British 
benevolence.  It  is  itself  British  benevolence  personified,  a 
personal  ministration  of  God's  money  in  the  hands  of  its 
members.  Women  of  w^ealth,  or  at  least  of  ample  means, 
join  this  Association  to  bless  the  poor,  instead  of  squander- 
^Woman's  Mission. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  WOMEN  OF  ENGLAND.  331 

ing  money  in  fashionable  follies,  and  it  is  a  holy  fashion 
among  the  well-bred  people  to  give  them  all  the  money  they 
need  without  being  asked  for  it. 

Woman's  Mission,  as  prepared  by  the  Baroness  Burdett- 
Coutts  for  the  Chicago  Exposition,  and  published  in  Lon- 
don, 1893,  is  a  remarkably  well-made  book;  a  handsome 
royal  octavo  volume  of  nearly  five  hundred  pages,  devoted 
to  the  details  of  woman's  work  in  England.  In  preparing 
it,  out  of  some  thousands  of  societies,  1,164  were  selected  as 
most  likely  to  respond  to  inquiries;  for  example, —  362 
societies  in  aid  of  children,  102  in  aid  of  girlhood,  130  for 
the  friendless,  200  to  aid  womanhood,  and  62  orders  of  sis- 
terhoods, or  deaconess  houses.  Satisfactory  returns  were 
received  from  only  390.  Two  hundred  and  ninety  of  those 
reported  84,129  voluntary  workers,  and  4,814  paid  assist- 
ants. Three  hundred  and  sixty-three  reported  2,546,984 
persons  as  benefited  in  one  year.  One  hundred  and  eighty- 
seven  reported  the  number  benefited  since  the  organization 
of  the  societies, —  19,046,967.  Eighty-one  societies  reported 
their  expenses,  since  foundation,  at  between  ten  and  eleven 
million  dollars.^ 

There  are,  by  a  carefully  prepared  and  most  conservative 
estimate,  in  the  English-speaking  world  of  to-day,  in  the 
Greater  Britain,  not  less  than  a  million  and  a  half  women 
who  are  locally  known  as  workers  to  be  depended  upon  in 
all  philanthropic  movements.  Including  America  and  the 
Australian  continent  there  are  probably  two  millions  of 
women  so  situated  in  respect  to  their  home  duties  that  they 
can  contend  with  the  dirt  and  hunger  of  the  outside  world, 
and  this  they  do.  The  great  standing  armies  of  Europe  are 
no  match  as  to  numbers,  and  the  women  are  learning  the 
points  of  organization,  of  drill,  and  discipline.  They  are 
watching,  and  eager,  and  Mailing  to  work,  and  they  will 
some  day  diminish  the  dirt  and  the  hunger  in  great  cities. 
"What  is  civilization?"  asked  Emerson:  "I  answer  it  is 
the  power  of  good  women."     There  should  be  a  million. 

'Report  of  Miss  Louisa  M.  Hubbard,  Woman's  Mission,  p.  3G1. 


332  CHRISTIAN   CHARITIES. 

philanthropic  native  women  workers  in  the  Turkish  empire, 
five  millions  of  native  Hindu  women  devoting  themselves 
to  philanthropy,  six  or  seven  millions  of  native  women  at 
work  in  humanitarian  service  in  China,  and  three-quarters 
of  a  million  in  Japan,  if  the  other  great  religions  of  the 
world  are  as  fruitful  of  practical  schemes  for  aiding  the 
poor  as  Christianity.  If  the  non-Christian  religions  had 
developed  the  highest  powers  of  womanhood,  as  Christianity 
has  done,  travelers  would  tell  us  what  fourteen  millions  of 
native  philanthropic  women  are  doing  outside  their  own 
homes  —  contending  with  dirt  and  nakedness  and  hunger, 
in  the  world  of  the  Orient. 

The  attitude  of  Christianity  throughout  Christendom 
toward  poverty  is  emphasized  by  a  comparison  of  the  great 
religions,  as  to  their  surplus  altruistic  energy  in  aid  of  the 
poor:  Christianity  is  maintaining  in  non-Christian  realms 
to-day  not  less  than  a  hundred  institutions  for  lepers  and 
homes  for  the  untainted  children  of  lepers,  with  7,523 
inmates;  247  institutions  for  foundlings,  infants,  and 
orphans,  with  16,916  inmates;  651  training  schools  for 
nurses  and  medical  students;  379  hospitals,  783  dispensa- 
ries, with  an  annual  average  of  85,169  in-patients,  2,347,780 
individual  patients,  and  6,442,427  consultations  and  treat- 
ments.^ 

In  its  scientific  bearing  upon  the  question  of  Kaces  and 
Religions  —  their  selection  and  the  survival  of  the  fittest, — 
racial  vigor  is  indicated  by  the  power  of  a  people  to  vivify 
its  own  stock  by  reenforcement  from  its  own  depressed 
classes.  If  Christianity  can  so  strengthen  itself  by  the 
gradual  betterment  of  its  own  people  in  their  relation  to 
material  well-being,  and  if  it  can  reach  out  into  non-Chris- 
tian realms  to  help  the  poor,  it  is  achieving  success  in  a 
department  of  social  beneficence,  in  w^hich  the  other  great 
religions  have  not  yet  made  notable  advancement.  Nor  is 
benefiting  the  poor  the  sole  result,  there  being  beside  a  dis- 
tinct social  advantage  in  the  altruistic  training  of  Chris- 
tendom. 

^Dennis'  Centennial  Survey. 


CHAPTER  VIII :   PARALLELS  AND  CONTRASTS  IN 
SELF-EXTENDING  ALTRUISTIC  POWER. 


During  certain  ages  of  the  Christian  Church,  in  the 
attempt  at  self-extension,  two  unchristian  mistakes  have 
been  made  in  Christendom  with  which  the  true  spirit  of 
Christianity  had  nothing  whatever  to  do,  which,  however, 
abide  with  us  to  this  day  in  their  mischievous  social  results : 
namely, —  the  multiplication  of  Christians  by  compromis- 
ing with  the  errors  of  baptized  but  unregenerate  paganism, 
and  what  was  in  effect  the  propagation  of  brotherly  love 
by  the  sword. 

(i)  When  Christianity  was  once  firmly  seated  upon  the 
throne  of  the  Caesars,  multitudes  were  baptized  who  had 
never  been  regenerated.  As  Brahmanism  became  less  pure 
when  it  adopted  as  its  own  all  the  errors  of  Modern  Hin- 
duism, as  Buddhism  suffered  by  receiving  to  itself  the  Con- 
fucianist  and  Taoist  errors  of  China  and  of  Shintoism  in 
Japan,  as  Confucianism  in  its  pristine  power  was  modified 
by  Taoism  and  Buddhism,  and  as  Islam  adapted  itself  to 
the  errors  of  its  proselytes  whose  distinctive  Mohammedan 
duties  interfered  little  with  entertaining  Arabic,  Ottoman 
or  Hindu  notions  and  customs,  so  it  was  a  far-reaching  error 
to  attempt  to  engraft  upon  Christianity  principles  alien  to 
it  and  to  vivify  unwholesome  leaf  and  fruitage  by  Chris- 
tian root  and  stock.  Sociologically  Christendom  has  not  yet 
recovered  from  it.  It  is  incredible  that  the  corrupt  the- 
ories and  practices  of  heathenism  should  not  have  poured 
into  the  current  of  the  Church  life,  like  the  mud  of  the 
Missouri  fouling  clear  water.  How  could  the  society  shaped 
by  Jesus  of  Nazareth  and  the  Apostle  John  be  quite  the 
same  after  receiving  Constantine,  and  one  after  another 
of  the  great  pagan  families,  the  pride  and  the  fashion  of 
the  empire,  without  due  washing  and  cleansing? 


334  THE    NOMINAL    CONVERSION 

During  that  long  period  in  which  the  great  religious  force 
of  Christianity  was  shut  up  in  monasteries,  it  was  less  oper- 
ative upon  society  as  such,  since  society  itself  was  little  else 
than  nominally  Christian;  the  documents  showing,  in  the 
seventh  century,  territories  where  the  recitation  of  the 
Lord 's  prayer  and  a  yearly  sacrament  apparently  comprised 
the  sum  of  both  popular  religious  instruction  and  duties.^ 
The  so-called  conversion  of  many  nations  did  not  imply  the 
regeneration  of  the  individual  life.  Kings  and  their  courts 
were  baptized,  and  the  most  loyal  of  their  people ;  their  only 
Christian  "experience"  that  of  being  wet  somewhat  scantily 
by  the  waters  of  baptism.^     And  henceforth  all  their  pagan 

^Compare  the  records  of  the  Synod  of  Trosley  at  the  beginning 
of  the  tenth  century.  Yide  also  the  strictures  of  Hildebrand  upon 
the  pagan  character  of  Roman,  Longobard  and  Norman  Chris- 
tianity, and  tlie  conduct  of  the  bishops  of  the  Church. 

It  is,  however,  true  that  this  mistake,  so  injurious  to  the  purity 
of  the  Church,  proved  to  be  in  the  interest  of  good  government: 
as  in  the  early  barbaric  conquests  of  the  south  the  condition  of 
the  barbarians  themselves  was  improved,  so  now  their  own  yield- 
ing to  the  presentation  of  the  cross  made  them  more  amenable 
to  Christian  law,  and  they  profited  by  mere  contact  with  a  higher 
civilization,  which  did  not  need  to  be  very  high  to  be  above  them. 

^Grotesque,  indeed,  were  some  of  the  old  methods  of  "convert- 
ing" the  heathen;  they  are  much  like  the  experiences  of  a  modern 
era  among  peoples  as  artless  as  children.  Jortin,  who  picked  up 
so  much  that  was  out  of  the  usual  course,  relates  that  in  the  year 
A.  D.  799,  "Arno,  Archbishop  of  Salzburg,  converted  many  of  the 
Sclavoaians,  who  became  very  fond  of  him.  He  used  to  make  all 
the  Christian  slaves  come  and  dine  at  his  own  table,  and  gave 
them  drink  out  of  gilt  cups;  whilst  their  pagan  masters  sat  with- 
out doors  on  the  ground,  like  dogs,  and  had  meat  and  drink  placed 
before  them.  When  they  asked  him  why  they  were  thus  treated, 
the  answer  was,  'As  you  have  not  been  washed  in  the  salutary 
bath,  j^ou  are  not  worthy  to  sit  and  eat  at  table  with  those  who 
are  regenerated.'  Upon  this  they  desired  also  to  be  instructed 
and  admitted  to  baptism."  "This  finesse,"  says  Jortin,  "was,  how- 
ever, more  Episcopal  and  Christian  than  the  usual  method  of 
bullying,  beating,  fining,  and  massacring  those  who  would  not 
quit  paganism."  (Remarks  on  Ecclesiastical  History.  John  Jor- 
tin, D.  D.     Vol.  Ill,  p.  81.     London,  1805.) 

The  Pomeranians  were  Christianized  at  the  beginning  of  the 


OF  PAGAN  EUROPE.  335 

superstitions  and  heathen  immorality  and  barbaric  violence 
were  called  Christian.  The  spirit  which  was  responsible  for 
bloody  persecutions  instituted  in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ, 
and  much  else  that  was  demoniacal,  were  no  part  of  essen- 
tial Christianity,  although  baptized  and  enrolled  as  such. 

In  the  conversion  of  England,  Ethelbert  received  the 
monk  Augustine  and  his  clergy  in  the  open  air,  lest  royalty 
be  hurt  by  Christian  enchantment;  but  when  the  religious 
invaders  advanced,  bearing  a  silver  cross  and  singing  the 
litany,  the  king  was  enchanted  and  became  a  Christian.  He 
gave  his  own  palace  to  Augustine  for  a  residence ;  and  a 
Christian  church  was  built  hard  by,  upon  the  spot  where  the 
Cathedral  of  Canterbury  now  stands.  The  people,  too, 
heeded  the  divine  message;  and  upon  Christmas  Day  ten 
thousand  of  them  were  baptized.^  They  became  Christians 
because  their  king  had  set  the  fashion;  nor  were  they  pre- 
viously under  rigid  instruction.  The  monks  took  the  pagan 
temples  and  sprinkled  them  with  holy  water;  and  then 
gathered  the  people  into  Church  festivals,  to  repeat  the 
same  carousals  they  had  used  under  the  worship  of  Woden. 
This  was  about  a  hundred  years  after  the  aristocrats  of 
Home  gave  in;  the  Christianization  of  England,  such  as  it 
was,  being  so  near  the  complete  triumph  of  the  new  faith 
in  the  capital  of  the  world. 

After  the  death  of  the  monk  Augustine,  the  Anglo-Saxons 
north  of  the  Humber  were  converted  under  the  reign  of  the 
pagan  Edwin,  who  became  a  Christian.  The  king's  nobles 
gathered  in  counsel.  Coifi,  the  high  priest,  said  that  their 
deities  did  not  reward  the  good,  and  if  any  better  doctrine 
could  be  taught  he  would  adopt  it.     Another  said  that 

twelfth  century  by  Bishop  Otto.  He  travelled  crosier  in  hand, 
clad  in  the  robes  of  his  office,  and  surrounded  by  ecclesiastical 
attendants  and  a  squad  of  soldiers.  His  wagons  rumbled  from 
village  to  village;  and  everywhere  he  baptized  the  astonished 
natives. 

'This  story  is  told  in  a  letter  from  Pope  Gregory  to  the  Patri- 
arch of  Alexandria.  Consult  Palgrave's  History  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxons,  pp.  49,  50.     London,  1867. 


336  THE    NOMINAL    CONVERSION 

man's  life  is  a  swallow's  flight, —  whence  it  comes,  whither 
it  goes,  we  know  not ;  if  this  new  doctrine  can  teach  us  any- 
thing certain  of  our  destiny  we  should  follow  it.  Coifi 
himself  was  the  first  to  hurl  a  defiant  spear  against  the  fane 
of  their  pagan  worship,  at  Godmundingham,  the  Goodman- 
ham  of  to-day,  at  Harthill  Wapentake,  in  the  East  Riding 
of  York ;  this  was  in  A.  D.  628.  And  the  missionary  Pauli- 
nus,  whom  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  had  sent  to  King 
Edwin,  was  employed  from  morning  to  night  for  thirty-six 
days  in  baptizing  the  multitude  who,  taking  their  cue  from 
the  king  and  the  nobles,  abandoned  idolatry.  They  were 
received  to  the  Church,  with  pagan  superstitions  eradicated 
only  in  part.  It  resulted  in  introducing  into  English 
Christianity  a  certain  intellectual  confusion  as  to  just  what 
it  was  to  become  a  Christian,  whether  it  involved  more  than 
baptism.  The  Anglo-Saxon  forests  were  alive  with  ghosts. 
Charms  and  incantations  were  as  needful  to  those  baptized 
English  heathen  as  they  are  to-day  to  the  unbaptized  pagans 
in  Africa.  To  this  nominal  Christianization,  it  is  due  that 
three  thousand  witches  were  executed  in  England  within  a 
score  of  years  in  the  seventeenth  century.  As  late  as  1751 
an  English  mob  killed  two  pauper  witches;  and  in  hunting 
for  them  looked  in  a  salt-box.  Lyall  reports  that  an  aged 
Frenchman  was  drowned  in  Essex  on  suspicion  of  sorcery  in 
1863.  The  pagan  ancestry  of  these  men  was  answerable  for 
it.  The  expulsion  of  the  Jews  from  England,  some  centu- 
ries since,  is  another  instance  in  point;  for  downright  bar- 
barity not  surpassed  —  unless  to-day  by  so-called  Christian 
peoples.  In  fact,  it  is  impossible  to  open  up  English  history 
at  any  point  without  stumbling  upon  evidence  of  the  merely 
nominal  Christianity  of  the  descendants  of  those  who  were 
baptized  by  Augustine,  Paulinus,  and  other  prelates.  Are 
there  not  Britons  in  the  slums  of  the  great  cities  of  England 
to-day,  w^hose  ancestors  have  stood  by  their  pagan  habits 
of  thought  during  thirty-five  generations  ? 

Two-thirds  of  the  first  emigrants  to  New  England  were 
but  nominally  Christian;  and  generation  after  generation 


OF  PAGAN  EUROPE.  337 

to  this  day  many  of  their  descendants  have  held  aloof  from 
the  Church.  Could  the  ancestry  of  the  unchurched  masses 
of  Old  England  be  traced,  it  would  be  found  that  they  never 
were  other  than  nominally  Christian.  Who  can  understand 
the  social  defects  of  Christendom  without  taking  these  facts 
into  account? 

Upon  the  other  hand,  the  great  body  of  devout  and  self- 
sacrificing  Christian  disciples  early  and  late,  in  Old  Eng- 
land and  the  New,  attests  the  faithful  education  and  train- 
ing and  true  conversion  of  a  great  multitude  of  the  early 
baptized  wards  of  the  Church. 

(ii)  If,  to  put  the  matter  mildly,  it  is  to  be  said,  that  the 
missionary  methods  pursued  by  the  Church  were  defective 
during  more  than  a  thousand  years,  it  cannot  be  mildly 
stated  that  the  advancement  of  Christianity  in  what  was 
quaintly  called  the  conversion  of  the  Northern  Nations,  was 
greatly  forwarded  by  the  use  of  the  sword. 

"Kome,"  says  Heine,  "always  yearned  for  sovereignty; 
and  when  her  legions  fell  she  sent  dogmas  into  the  prov- 
inces." Were  not  the  dogmas  more  dreaded  than  the 
legions  by  some?  Vanquished  foes  by  the  thousand  took 
death  rather  than  dogma,  when  they  had  their  choice. 
That  they  did  so  was  better,  since  but  a  little  more  of  bap- 
tized heathenism  without  admixture  would  have  been  the 
death  of  the  Church. 

When  the  princes  of  this  world  did  propagate  Christian- 
ity by  the  sword,  Mohammed  himself  and  the  Saracens  did 
not  engage  in  religious  conquest  with  more  zest.  It  was  an 
age  of  blood;  generation  after  generation  the  sword  was 
never  sheathed.  With  no  choice  for  the  ablest  men  but  the 
Church,  the  battlefield,  or  the  throne  of  a  king,  the  Church 
Avas  served  both  by  kings  and  warriors.  And  it  was  through 
the  so-called  "Christian"  conquest  of  pagans  by  the  sword 
that  bundles  of  pagan  superstition  were  tumbled  into  the 
open  door  of  the  Church.  For  exam.ple,  no  country  in  Eu- 
rope was  ever  more  thoroughly  saturated  with  the  blood  of 
witch-murder  than  Germany.  And  was  it  not  Charlemange 
22 


338  EXTENSION   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

who  "converted"  Germany  in  eighteen  campaigns  without 
spiritual  regeneration?  This  was  perhaps  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years  after  the  nominal  conversion  of  England. 

Charlemange  was,  indeed,  the  first  after  the  fall  of  Rome, 
to  bring  order  out  of  confusion  in  Europe:  in  him  the 
Roman  conquest  of  the  world  reappeared.  His  stalwart 
character  imparted  unwonted  dignity  to  the  earlier  Middle 
Ages,  so  monotonously  barbaric.  He  was  a  conqueror  by 
heredity,  the  blood  of  Pepin  and  of  Charles  Martel  flowing 
in  his  sword  arm.  At  the  outset  his  wars  were  begun  in  an 
attempt  to  fend  off  barbarism  which  was  always  threatening 
his  kingdom;  and  they  ended  in  bringing  the  barbarians 
into  orderly  submission.  The  wars  were  a  political  neces- 
sity. And  in  baptizing  the  vanquished,  will  or  nil,  the  holy 
water  was  applied  as  a  political  clincher,  it  being  from 
■  Charlemagne's  standpoint,  a  token  of  submission  like  an 
oath  of  allegiance  in  the  name  of  the  Triune  God,  that 
iienceforth  they  would  be  Christian  subjects  of  a  Christian 
king.  From  the  New  Testament  standpoint,  however,  his 
ultimatum  to  the  Saxons  was  this :  ' '  Love  your  enemies :  do 
good  to  those  that  hate  you ;  whatsoever  ye  would  that  men 
should  do  to  you,  do  ye  even  so  to  them : —  take  your  bap- 
tismal oath  to  do  this,  or  I  will  kill  you. ' ' 

Wittekind  was  a  Saxon  king  who  dwelt  in  a  castle  whose 
ruins  still  stand  upon  one  of  the  red  sandstone  hills,  or 
gate-posts  of  the  "Westphalian  Gate,"  where  the  river 
AVeser  breaks  through  the  mountains  which  form  a  step 
between  upper  and  lower  Germany,  and  flows  down  into 
the  plains  of  Westphalia.  It  is  about  three  miles  above  the 
modern  town  of  Minden.  In  A.  D.  772  Charlemagne 
destroyed  this  castle.  It  was  not,  however,  till  a  year  later, 
that  his  obstinate  and  bloody  and  treacherous  foes  com- 
pelled the  conqueror  to  return  and  waste  the  land  till  the 
Saxons  submitted  to  baptism.  Charlemagne  beheaded  four 
thousand  who  preferred  death, —  with  Saxon  pluck  delib- 
erately choosing  to  die  as  his  enemies  rather  than  live  in 
submission.     The    war    was    not  over,  and  die  they  did. 


BY  THE  SWORD.  339 

Witteldnd  still  held  out,  battle  after  battle.  When 
defeated,  he  came  to  camp  for  baptism.  The  ceremony- 
took  place  near  his  ruined  castle;  the  tradition  pointing 
to  the  spot  where  the  traveller  now  sees  the  ruins  of  a 
chapel  on  the  Wittekindsberg  above  the  Westphalian  Gate. 
The  conqueror  of  the  Saxons  then  had  the  hardihood  to 
send  them  up  a  quantity  of  sermons  translated  into  Ger- 
man, to  introduce  new  ideas  into  their  baptized,  hard, 
heathen  heads.  He  then,  with  singular  practical  wisdom, 
filled  the  conquered  Anglo-Saxon  territory  with  churches 
and  religious  houses  to  educate  the  Saxon  youth.  So  there 
was  introduced  into  the  nation  a  genuine  Christian  element, 
which  succeeded  in  partially  tempering  the  savageness  of 
the  people,  making  the  nominally  Christian  barbarians  less 
barbaric  than  peoples  not  yet  conquered  or  baptized.  Thus 
the  light,  which  lighteth  every  man,  broke  into  the  dark 
northern  forests.  And  when  there  came  relatively  peaceful 
ages,  or  even  a  few  halcyon  years,  the  kingdom  of  God 
grew  apace,  as  the  forests  themselves  gave  place  to  smiling 
gardens  under  the  tranquil  energies  of  nature  and  the 
craft  of  man ;  so  a  divine  purpose  appeared,  explaining  the 
meaning  of  diverse  events, —  much  as  our  knowledge  of 
mathematical  science  has  explained  certain  movements  of 
the  heavenly  bodies,  which  were  formerly  deemed  erratic. 
Irresistible  moral  prowess  was  ultimately  wielded  by  the 
Germanic  people ;  the  leading  minds  receiving  most  heartily 
those  principles  of  Christianity  which  have  undergirded 
the  great  nations  of  the  modern  era.^ 

The  "Christian"  wars  of  Charlemagne  followed  closely 
after  the  wars  of  the  Saracens ;  the  massacre  of  the  Saxons 

'The  change  effected  by  Christianity  in  the  Germanic  people  is 
referred  to  by  Samson  Reed  in  his  suggestive  booklet  upon  the 
Groivth  of  the  Mind.     Boston,  1S86: 

"To  revelation  it  is  to  be  ascribed  that  the  genius  which  has 
taught  the  laws  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  and  analyzed  the  material 
world,  did  not  spend  itself  in  drawing  the  bow  or  in  throwing 
the  lance  in  the  chase  or  in  war;  and  that  the  vast  powers  of 
Handel  did  not  burst  forth  in  the  wild  notes  of  the  war  song." 


340  EXTENSION   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

being  but  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  the  death  of 
Mohammed.  About  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  later, 
there  opened  another  scene  in  the  drama  of  the  so-called 
"Conversion  of  the  Northern  nations."  Did  not  Olaf  the 
Saint  win  his  saintship  in  strange  fashion  ?  The  old  chron- 
icles of  Norway^  tell  us  that  King  Olaf  once  went  through 
a  portion  of  his  country  and  summoned  to  him  men  from 
the  greatest  distances.  "And  he  inquired  particularly  how 
it  stood  with  their  Christianity;  where  improvement  was 
needful,  he  taught  them  the  right  customs.  If  any  there 
were  who  would  not  renounce  heathen  ways,  he  took  the 
matter  so  zealously  that  he  drove  some  out  of  the  country, 
mutilated  others  of  hands  or  feet,  or  stung  their  eyes  out; 
hung  up  some,  cut  down  some  with  the  sword ;  but  let  none 
go  unpunished  who  would  not  serve  God.  He  went  thus 
through  the  w^hole  district,  sparing  neither  great  nor  small. 
He  gave  them  teachers,  and  placed  these  as  thickly  in  the 
country  as  he  saw  needful.  In  this  manner  he  went  about 
in  that  district,  and  had  three  hundred  deadly  men-at-arms 
with  him ;  and  then  proceeded  to  Raumarige.  He  soon  per- 
ceived that  Christianity  was  thriving  less  the  farther  he 
proceeded  into  the  interior  of  the  country.  He  went  for- 
ward everywhere  in  the  same  way,  converting  all  the  people 
to  the  right  faith,  and  severely  punishing  all  who  would 
not  listen  to  his  word." 

We  need  not  wonder  that  the  next  thing  we  read  in  the 
Chronicle  is  this:  "Now  when  the  king  who  at  that  time 
ruled  in  Raumarige  heard  of  this,  he  thought  it  was  a  very 
bad  affair." 

The  Chronicle  relates  that  two  robber  brothers  with  a 
troop  joined  the  army  of  Olaf  the  Saint  when  he  would 
retake  his  kingdom,  and  that  the  king  would  have  them 
baptized  or  send  them  away.  Gauker-Thorer  said :  "  I  and 
my  comrades  have  no  faith  but  on  ourselves,  our  strength, 
and  the  luck  of  victory;  and  with  this  faith  we  slip  through 

^Sturleson  Heimskringla;  or  Chronicles  of  the  Kings  of  Nor- 
way.    (Translated  by  S.  Laing.)     3  Vols.     London,  1844. 


BY  THE  SWORD.  341 

sufficiently  well."  But  when  it  was  found  that  the  king 
Avould  not  have  them  without  baptism,  this  self-reliant  fel- 
low said  to  his  brother :  "  If  I  go  into  battle  I  will  give  my 
help  to  the  king,  for  he  has  most  need  of  help.  And  if  I 
must  believe  in  God,  why  not  in  the  white  Christ  as  well 
as  in  any  other?  Now  it  is  my  advice,  therefore,  that  we 
let  ourselves  be  baptized,  since  the  king  insists  so  much 
upon  it,  and  then  go  into  the  battle  with  him."  So  the 
robbers  were  baptized  with  their  thirty  followers,  who  had 
been  waiting  upon  a  hill-top  overlooking  the  hostile  camps. 

Olaf  the  Saint  is  represented  in  old  sagas  as  sometimes 
praying  all  night,  and  singing  psalms  when  riding  through 
the  country;  and  he  argued  like  a  minister  with  the  idol- 
aters. And  he  was  very  cunning  in  war,  which  was  his 
great  weapon. 

Both  Olaf  Trygyvesson,  the  father,  and  Olaf  Haroldsson, 
the  sainted  son,  were  fierce  missionaries,  propagating  Chris- 
tianity by  the  sword  as  the  Mohammedans  did  their  reli- 
gion. Not  indeed  devoting  their  lives  to  it,  but  they  hated 
the  forms  of  paganism  most  heartily. 

The  fierce  Norse  pirates  were  not  pagans.  Were  not  the 
chiefs  of  the  Jornsburg  unkings  wont  to  drink  the  health 
of  Jesus  Christ,  and  fill  their  bowls  to  the  memory  of  St. 
Michael  ? 

Looked  at  as  a  matter  of  moral  evolution,  the  "conver- 
sion" of  the  barbarians,  in  such  fashion,  explains  much. 
Even  if  the  doctrine  of  love  was  what  Christians  taught  the 
savages  when  they  once  got  them  under  their  thumbs,  and 
even  if  they  built  up  a  Christian  civilization,  the  funda- 
mental principles  were  left  in  such  shalrv  condition  that 
even  to  this  day  in  many  imperfectly  regenerated  Christian 
communities,  an  overbearing  public  spirit,  intolerant  of 
opposition,  will  back  up  wicked  wars  that  may  extend 
Christian  empire,  in  violation  of  the  plainest  principles  of 
Christianity.  So  near  are  we  to-day  to  man  primeval,  and 
so  far  away  is  the  perfect  reign  of  the  kingdom  of  love. 

No  reader  can  review  the  details  of  the  merest  sketch  of 


342  THE   CLEANSING   POWER 

Christian  history  without  being  constantly  thrown  back 
upon  the  story  of  man  primeval  for  further  illustrations  of 
the  "spirit  of  the  age"  in  the  Christian  centuries.  Not 
even  yet  in  moral  evolution  has  Christianity  cleared  itself 
of  the  "old  man,"  the  body  of  sin  —  not  yet  has  it  wholly 
put  on  the  "new  man,"  and  become  wholly  "a  new  crea- 
ture" in  Christ  Jesus,^  nor  has  the  kingdom  of  love  yet 
triumphed  in  the  earth.  May  not  a  non-Christian  critic  of 
Christianity  well  question :  How  did  it  all  come  about  that 
Christian  nations  have  acquired  a  governmental  grip  upon 
vast  areas  of  the  world's  surface,  to-day  densely  occupied 
by  Brahman,  Buddhist,  and  Mohammedan  populations? 
Did  it  come  about  through  the  normal  outworking  of  the 
principles  of  the  spiritual  kingdom  of  love?  Or  was  it 
through  the  aggressive  violence  of  that  part  of  Christendom 
which  has  been  imperfectly  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  the 
Prince  of  Peace  —  the  red  right  arm  of  man-primeval 
merely  "baptized"  into  Christianity?  May  he  not  also 
ask  if  such  modern  conquests  had  occurred  in  the  "middle 
ages"  of  Christian  Europe,  the  subject  populations  would 
not  have  been  baptized  as  Christian  right  and  left,  as  the 
monks  who  followed  Cortez  baptized  the  Mexicans  by  the 
million?  Had  the  British  conquest  of  India,  as  a  purely 
commercial  enterprise,  occurred  three  hundred  years  earlier, 
Hindustan  would  thereafter  have  been  known  as  a  "  Chris- 
tian" country,  and  would  have  been  as  truly  so  as  Mexico 
and  Peru  after  their  conquest  by  Spain. 

One  great  boon  has,  however,  during  many  ages,  early 
and  late,  befallen  Christianity  —  which  is  always  to  be 
spoken  of  as  no  synonym  of  the  Church:  it  is  the  constant 
sifting  process  of  persecution.  The  vast  enrollment  of 
merely  nominal  followers  has  been  less  injurious  to  Chris- 
tianity than  to  the  other  great  religions,  since  the  truths  of 
the  system  have  been  held  by  a  vast  body  of  tested  disci- 
ples ;  their  experimental  knowledge  proving  itself  a  vitaliz- 
ing power  age  after  age.     The  ten  persecutions  of  Chris- 

'Col.  3:  9,  10.     II  Cor.  5:  17. 


OP  PERSECUTION.  343 

tianity  by  pagan  Rome  was  a  test  to  which  no  other  widely 
diffused  religion  was  ever  put.  The  Confucian  system  was 
that  of  the  government  itself.  The  Brahmanical  faith  was 
never  persecuted.  The  Taoists  in  China,  and  the  great 
Buddhist  movement  (aside  from  its  being  driven  out  of 
India  by  the  Brahmans)  were  never  seriously  beset  by  fire 
and  sword.  And  there  was  no  great  world  power  to  attempt 
to  crush  out  jMohammedanism.^ 

So  thoroughly,  moreover,  was  the  organization  of  the 
Christian  Church  hampered  by  the  tradition  and  influence 
of  Imperial  Rome  —  so  firmly  did  the  scheme  of  a  Holy 
Roman  Empire  hold  the  ecclesiastics  and  Christian  roy- 
alty,—  that  the  original  ideas  underlying  the  spiritual 
kingdom  of  love  were  not  given  full  force  as  the  centuries 
went  by:  and  the  interpretation  put  upon  the  Christian 
ideal  by  the  Friends  of  God,  by  Waldenses,  by  Huguenots, 
by  such  thinkers  and  workers  as  Savonarola,  Huss  of 
Prague,  ]\Iartin  Luther,  and  that  great  moral  reformer  and 
organizer  John  Calvin,  led  to  a  long,  hot  battle  on  the  part 
of  Rome  before  the  protesting  men  gained  the  right  to  live. 
And  before  the  adherents  of  the  old  order  of  things  would 
be  quiet,  France  and  Spain  were  nationally  weakened, 
beyond  recovery  age  after  age,  by  removing  from  their  soil 
through  death  or  exile  their  most  active-minded  citizens 
and  most  valuable  industrial  population.  Yet  as  the  fear 
of  Attila  created  Venice  the  Queen  of  the  Seas,  so  the  Ger- 
manic nations  were  built  up  by  the  policy  of  the  Latin 
peoples.     The  faith  also  of  the  Germanic  stock,  once  tested 

'Christian  wars  against  the  Saracens  were  defensive.  The  cru- 
sadal  wars  had  a  local  intent,  and  were  not  directed  against  Islam 
as  such. 

As  to  the  crusades,  be  it  said,  in  passing,  that  in  conducting 
these  great  military  movements  the  dominant  ecclesiastical  pow- 
ers granted  remission  of  "penances";  and  civic  power  exempted 
from  the  jurisdiction  of  secular  tribunals,  such  criminals,  vaga- 
bonds, and  outlaws,  as  would  take  part  in  the  holy  war. —  Vide 
Dolllnger's  Studies  in  European  History.     London,  1890. 


344  EXTENSION   OF   ISLAM 

by  persecution,  was  in  a  limited  way  further  tested  by  the 
events  that  peopled  the  New  England  over  sea. 

Through  these  influences,  Christianity  has  been  able,  to  a 
certain  extent,  to  overcome  the  handicap  put  upon  it  by  the 
early  and  long  continued  admission  of  the  errors  of  pagan- 
ism in  the  nominal  conversion  and  sometimes  violent  conver- 
sion of  great  peoples.  At  least,  Christianity  has  thereby, 
to  some  extent  at  least,  reverted  to  its  early  ideals  more 
perfectly  than  some  of  the  other  great  religions  which  have 
not  been  tested  by  adverse  powers. 

II. 

After  such  preface, —  relating  to  the  erroneous  methods 
for  Christian  self-extension  adopted  by  missioners,  unre- 
generate,  unsanctified,  or  ill-instructed  in  the  principles  of 
pristine  Christianity, —  we  are  in  position  to  allude  to  the 
relation  in  which  each  of  the  other  great  religions  —  having 
its  seed  in  itself  after  its  kind  —  stands  toward  the  self- 
propagation  of  its  theoretical  altruism  by  system. 

The  Prophet  of  Arabia  had  no  distinctly  formulated  con- 
ception of  universal  sway,  unless  through  conquest.  Con- 
cerning this,  the  mandate  was  positive  in  Islam.^  Contra- 
rywise,  the  propagation  of  Christianity  by  the  sword,  if 
resorted  to,  is  expressly  against  both  the  letter  and  the 
spirit  of  the  Gospel.  Aside  from  the  use  of  the  sword,  how- 
ever, it  is  a  mistake  to  think  of  the  Mussulman  as  always 
eager  for  proselyting.  "Of  what  use  would  it  be  to  convert 
a  thousand  infidels?  Would  it  increase  the  number  of  the 
faithful?  B}^  no  means.  Their  number  is  decreed  by 
God."-  Yet  wealthy  sons  of  Islam  furnish  money  for  the 
extension  of  their  faith  in  Africa  to-day.  Since  the  con- 
quest of  Northern  Africa  by  Akbar  of  Damascus,  the  work 
has  never  ceased.  Notable  Moslem  missions  have  been  at 
times  greatly  advanced  by  ambitious  chiefs,  and  by  certain 

Treeman's  Ottoman  Poioer  in  Europe,  pp.  61,  62. 

^Lane's  Modern  Egyptians.    Vol.  I,  pp.  428,  429.     London,  1842. 


BY  THE   SWORD   IN   AFRICA.  345 

warlike  fraternities  in  Islam/  carrying  the  creed  at  the 
point  of  the  sword  —  either  crushing  or  converting;  and 
this  work  has  been  followed  by  the  incessant  labors  of  the 
.schoolmaster  to  thoroughly  Islaraize  the  natives.-  If  such 
■conquests  have  been  looked  upon  as  offering  providential 
openings  for  the  spread  of  the  faith,  it  is  a  view  not  without 
precedent  in  Christendom.  This  mission  work  is  greatly 
furthered  by  the  far-reaching  operations  of  Mussulman 
merchants.  Through  improved  methods  of  travel  new 
allies  have  penetrated  the  interior  of  the  continent,  and  the 
work  has  been  carried  to  such  an  extent  that  the  number  of 
adherents  is  estimated  at  eighty  millions."  It  is  a  matter 
of  the  utmost  simplicity.  Islam  adapts  itself  to  the  native 
genius.  No  question  comes  up  of  moral  regeneration,  or  a 
radical  change  of  life-motives.  The  recitation  of  the  creed, 
the  daily  prayers,  the  legal  almsgiving,  the  Ramadan  fast 
by  day  and  feast  by  night,  the  great  pilgrimage  if  one  can 

^There  are  more  than  four  score  well  organized  Moslem  frater- 
nities, each  as  obedient  to  its  sheik  as  his  hand  would  be;  some 
of  them  most  efficient  propagators  of  the  faith  for  more  than 
twenty  generations,  others  formed  in  recent  years.  Some  are 
most  devout  mystics,  seeking  to  commune  with  God  in  desert 
solitudes,  and  all  are  zealots  for  their  faith. 

-Great  Religions  of  the  World,  chapter  on  Mohammedanism  by 
Oskar  Mann,  Orientalist  in  the  Royal  Library,  Berlin,  pp.  27,  28, 
C3.  G4.  New  York,  1901.  Yide  also  D. —  A.  Forget's  L'Islam  et  le 
Christianisme  Dans  L'Afrique  Centrale.     Paris.  1900. 

Blyden's  Christianity,  Islarti,  and  the  Negro  Race,  London,  1887, 
enters  more  fully  into  details  than  other  authorities.  Vide  pp. 
199,  357-360.  Many  tribes  have  received  Islam  peacefully,  among 
them  the  most  powerful  tribes  in  the  Soudan.  During  two  genera- 
tions these  tribes  have  made  holy  wars  against  the  heathen,  with 
wonderful  activity  and  success.  About  fifty  years  ago,  large  dis- 
tricts of  the  upper  Niger  were  so  reduced.  "Anxious  for  the 
spoils  of  time  and  the  rewards  of  eternity,"  the  Moslem  warriors 
have  brought  to  their  faith  the  most  powerful  tribes,  seeking  to 
win  all  Africa  north  of  the  equator  to  Islam.  And  everywhere 
the  most  irrational  and  debasing  superstition  has  yielded  to  the 
more  reasonable  tenets  of  Mahommed,  and  the  schoolhouse  has 
been  erected  in  every  village. 

^Oskar  Mann,  p.  69,  Great  Religions  of  the  World. 


346 


THE  EXTENSION  OP   ISLAM. 


afford  it, —  it  is  this  that  transforms  the  vanquished  mil- 
lions. Notwithstanding  the  decisive  reports  against  the 
influence  of  the  Arabs  in  Central  Africa,  by  Emin  Pasha, 
Sir  Samuel  Baker,  and  General  Gordon,  as  they  had  occa- 
sion to  know  them,  there  is  good  reason  to  believe  that,  in 
other  districts,  sobriety  and  industry,  tribal  unity,  and  a 
relatively  civilized  life  have  been  the  result  of  Mohamme- 
dan instruction,  and  this  upon  the  testimony  of  travelers 
who  reported  otherwise  concerning  other  regions.  These 
favorable  conditions  exist  westward;  Mohammedanism 
exerting  a  salutary  influence,  and  displacing  nothing  so 
good  as  itself.  For  hundreds  of  miles  along  the  west  coast 
the  influence  of  Islam  has  been  against  the  slave-trade,  and 
the  villages  and  to\^ais  with  Moslem  teachers  are  in  advance 
of  others;  the  converts  exhibiting  unwonted  self-reliance, 
energy  and  self-respect.^  One  of  the  best  results  is  the 
erection  of  a  barrier  by  temperate  Islam  against  the  inflow 
of  the  rivers  of  rum,  that  the  baptized  pagans  of  Christen- 
dom are  seeking  to  pour  into  Africa.- 

In  India  the  lowest  castes  are  in  a  state  of  unrest  after 
ages  of  submission  to  Hindu  ceremonial  law,  from  which 
they  are  freed  at  once  by  Islam.  They  are  relieved,  too, 
from  the  burden  of  sins  believed  to  have  been  accumulated 
in  former  states  of  existence.  Into  the  brotherhood  of 
believers  they  are  at  once  received  upon  terms  of  social 
equality,  being  done  with  caste  forever.^     Yet  Sir  Eichard 

Wide  Contemporary  Review,  December,  188G;  Lane  Poole's 
Studies  in  a  Mosque,  p.  Ill;  Dr.  E.  Blyden's  People  of  Africa, 
passim.  New  York,  1871,  and  the  edition  of  1887,  under  the  title 
of  Christianity,  Islam,  and  the  Negro  Race,  London;  Reginald 
Bosworth  Smith's  Lectures  on  Mohammedanisyn,  pp.  42-51,  Sec- 
ond Edition;  and  H.  P.  Smith's  Bihle  and  Islam,  p.  318. 

-Walker  of  the  Gaboon  mission,  in  Missionary  Herald,  Boston, 
February,  1870.  In  1885,  ten  million  gallons  of  intoxicating 
drinks  were  shipped  to  Africa  from  the  United  States,  England, 
France  and  Germany,  most  of  it  in  that  year  from  Germany. — 
Report  of  London  Missionary  Conference  for  ISSS,  II,  p.  550. 

'Industrially  they  are  advantaged,  and  the  standard  of  sanita- 
tion is  improved.  In  life  and  morals,  Indian  Islam  is,  however, 
not  better  than  Hinduism. —  Joues'  India's  Prohlem,  p.  57. 


ITS  GRIP  ON  ITS  VOTARIES.  347 

Temple's  observation  upon  Islam  in  India  led  him  to  speak 
of  it  as  establishing  a  "narrow  and  exclusive  character"; 
which  accords  with  the  testimony  of  Professor  M.  Monier- 
Williams,  that  "there  is  a  finality  and  want  of  elasticity 
about  Mohammedanism  which  precludes  its  expanding 
beyond  a  certain  fixed  line  of  demarcation ;  having  once 
reached  this  line,  it  appears  to  lapse  backwards,  to  tend 
towards  mental  and  moral  slavery,  to  contract  within  nar- 
rower and  narrower  circles  of  bigotry  and  exclusiveness. " 
No  other  religion  has,  however,  a  firmer  hold  on  its  vota- 
ries than  Islam.  It  is  largely  a  matter  of  tradition  from 
father  to  son.  And  the  father  is  to  kill  the  son  outright 
if  he  abandons  his  faith:  this  is  according  to  the  funda- 
mental law  in  all  Mussulman  states, —  slaying  the  hardened 
apostate  for  the  safety  of  others.  It  is  not  other  than  the 
Judaic  rule  perpetuated.^  So  Islam  holds  its  own,  not  by 
force  of  reason,  but  by  law  and  penalty.  While,  therefore, 
it  is  true  that  individuals  are  led  to  Christianity  through 
the  Old  and  New  Testament  Scriptures  which  are  com- 
mended by  the  Koran,-  or,  more  commonly  led  to  it,  through 
the  silent  influence  of  the  British  Christian  m.erchant, 
"who,  mid  the  temptations  of  trade,  to  crookedness,  duplic- 
ity and  corruptness  of  native  merchants  and  officials,  have 
maintained  their  integrity  untarnished,"^  yet  it  cannot  be 
looked  for  that  Islam  will  easily  yield  to  Christianity  in  the 
Orient.  There  is  so  much  religious  truth  in  the  system 
that  the  most  spiritual  cling  to  it  with  a  tenacity  that  is 
all  the  greater  from  their  knowledge  of  the  practical  idol- 

Wide  Deut.  13:  6-10. 

'These  writings  were  apparently  accepted  as  authority  by  the 
Prophet,  who  ranked  Jesus  as  a  divine  messenger,  inferior  to 
himself.  Consult  Sir  Milliam  Muir's  Life  of  Mahomet,  I.  LXX. 
English  Edition. 

The  Prophet  had  no  direct  knowledge  of  the  Jewish  and  Chris- 
tian Scriptures,  but  accepted  them  on  general  principles  as  part 
of  the  scheme  of  revealed  religion. —  D.  B.  Macdonald,  LL.  D. 

^Tlie  Mohammedan  Missionary  Problem,  by  H.  H.  Jessup  (for 
forty  years  in  Syria),  p.  81.     Philadelphia. 


348  ISLAM. 

atry  of  many  of  the  old  Christian  churches  in  the  East;^ 
and  the  penalty  for  open  apostacy  hinders  any  popular 
movement  for  the  abandonment  of  their  faith.  Then,  too, 
it  is  the  habit  in  the  East,  inbred  from  immemorial  genera- 
tions, for  men  to  do  as  their  fathers  have  done  time  out  of 
mind.  The  reign  of  Islam  is  as  little  likely  to  be  disturbed 
during  many  centuries  as  the  permanency  of  the  sands  of 
the  Sahara,  which  are  kept  Mdthin  certain  boundaries 
because  the  attraction  of  gravitation  is  stronger  than  the 
vagrant  winds.  It  has  been  observed  by  an  acute  special- 
ist in  matters  Arabic,  Professor  Macdonald  of  Hartford 
Seminary,  that  there  is  an  inbred  necessity  for  the  Moslem 
to  rule;  which  is  a  constant  cause  of  irritation  in  China, 
as  it  is  feared  it  may  be  in  Bengal.-  This  is  on  account  of 
the  basic  relations  of  Koranic  law  which  keeps  a  firm  grip 
on  all  the  dealings  of  Mussulman  with  non-Mohammedan 
political  organizations, —  as  to  civic  and  criminal  rulings, 
their  industries,  social  life,  and  the  homes  of  the  people. 

^There  is  more  religious  truth  in  Islam  than  there  was  in  some 
of  the  early  Christian  heresies  in  the  Orient.  So  far  did  some  of 
the  heretical  sects  depart  from  the  normal  Christian  type,  and  so 
ungodly  was  the  living  of  many  who  styled  themselves  Orthodox 
and  so  revolting  was  their  image  worship,  that  historians  have 
sometimes  spoken  of  the  rise  of  Islam  as  in  some  respects  not  a 
new  religion,  but  the  appearance  of  an  eccentric  heretical  form  of 
Eastern  Christianity;  Mohammed  accepting  the  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures, Old  and  New,  and  adding  the  newer  revelation  made  to  him 
as  the  last  and  the  greatest  of  the  prophets.  This  view  was 
entertained  by  Dean  Stanley,  Eastern  Church,  p.  363.  New 
York,  187G;  and  by  Bollinger,  Reunion  of  Churches,  p.  7.  Oxen- 
ham's  tl.,  1872. 

'Vide  Spectator,  LXXI,  p.  541.  The  Indian  census  of  1891 
revealed  a  Mussulman  majority  in  Bengal  proper,  as  the  result 
of  missions  maintained  for  centuries  by  that  Moslem  sect  which 
is  most  rigid, —  the  character  of  the  Bengalese  being  so  changed 
that  the  problem  of  their  control  will  be  more  diflBcult. 

W.  W.  Hunter's  Indian  Mussulmans,  third  edition,  London, 
1876,  gives  a  detailed  statement  of  Moslem  grievances  against 
the  British  administration,  and  the  political  danger  from  the 
Wahabis. 


ITS   LIMITATIONS.  349 

In  this  way,  the  mental  habit  of  the  individual  is  so  formed 
as  to  lead  him  to  fall  out  of  his  rightful  position  if  he  is  so 
situated  that  he  cannot  enforce  the  Koranic  law.  The 
Turks  allow  none  but  the  faithful  in  their  military  service, 
and  the  war  with  Greece  indicates  that  as  "fighters  on  the 
path  of  God"  their  ancient  valor  has  not  died  out;  yet  the 
relative  armed  importance  of  Islam  has  changed  forever 
since  the  days  of  the  Saracens ;  and  the  nationality  of  Tur- 
key' is  maintained  solely  by  Christian  political  influences, 
as  a  make-shift  for  the  existing  balance  of  power.^  As 
contrasted  with  the  ancient  propagation  of  Buddhism 
through  the  force  of  ideas,  Islam  has  never  made  great 
advances,  and  if  it  be  not  strictly  true  that  its  enlargement 
has  been  uniformly  through  the  sword,  it  is  true  that  there 
has  been  such  a  sharply  defined  boundary  to  its  expansion 
as  to  indicate  decisively  that  it  will  never  dominate  the 
world.  A  brilliant  French  writer  speaks  of  the  Koran  as 
offering  a  religion  for  the  tent  and  caravan,  adapted  to 
nomadic  life,  and  limited  by  fixed  lines  of  latitude.  Vam- 
ber}',  the  great  Asiatic  traveler,  says  that  Mohammedanism 
never  flourished  above  forty  degrees  north.  It  never  made 
good  a  position  in  Europe  outside  of  Turkey.  Does  not  the 
system  as  such  lack  the  vital  seed  of  future  development? 

'"For  at  least  a  century  the  Turkish  Government  has  been  so 
bad  and  so  weak  that  it  ought  to  have  perished,  and  would  have 
perished  had  it  been  left  to  itself.  Russia  would  have  prac- 
tically annexed  at  least  the  European  parts  of  it  but  for  the 
jealousy  of  some  other  European  Powers,  and  especially  of  Great 
Britain.  Mehemet  Ali  would  have  overthrown  the  House  of  0th- 
man  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  present  century  had  not  the  Euro- 
pean Powers  intervened.  And  latterly  European  money,  bor- 
rowed by  the  Turks,  has  enabled  them  to  keep  down  their  dis- 
affected subjects  by  modern  European  weapons  in  a  way  that 
would  formerly  have  been  impossible." —  Professor  James  Bryce. 

England's  responsibility  for  strengthening  the  hands  of  Turkey 
is  discussed  by  W.  S.  Blunt,  Fortnightly  Review,  Vol.  34,  p.  23. 

Concerning  all  this,  however,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  early 
dissolution  of  the  Turkish  empire  has  been  discussed  in  Chris- 
tendom during  four  centuries. 


350  BUDDHISM 

Sir  Alfred  Lyall  remarks  that  Islam  has  made  relatively 
little  progress  in  India  during  two  centuries;  that  is, 
through  its  own  inherent  energy.  A  natural  increase, 
above  the  native  average,  has  appeared,  however,  through 
the  Moslem  restrictions  in  diet,  and  the  greater  care  of 
child  life ;  the  gain  in  twenty  years,  as  reported  by  the 
Indian  census,  being  more  than  seven  millions.  In  the 
Dutch  East  Indies,  Islam  is  also  advancing  by  natural 
increase  and  by  the  constant  reduction  of  paganism  under 
its  sway.  It  cannot  be  learned  that  there  is  an  increase  in 
China ;  their  number  is  variously  estimated, —  President 
Martin  calling  it  ten  millions.^  The  number  of  Moslem 
adherents  throughout  the  world  is  probably  not  far  from 
one  hundred  and  eighty-five  millions,  although  the  estimate 
of  two  hundred  millions  may  be  not  without  warrant. 

III. 

In  Gautama's  puritj'-  of  purpose  and  sincere  desire  to 
benefit  mankind,  he  did  not  think  of  his  own  teaching  as  a 
finality:  and  the  appearance  of  another  Buddha  after  the 
lapse  of  ages  was  a  part  of  the  early  belief.-  At  a  time 
w^hen  the  Greek  philosophers  and  Roman  religionists,  high 
spirited  Brahmans,  and  even  the  Jews,  made  little  attempt 
at  proselyting,  the  peace  loving  disciples  of  the  Prince  of 
India  went  out  into  all  Eastern  Asia  proclaiming  doctrines 
that  ameliorated  the  condition  of  society  in  widely  extended 
realms.  Through  commending  itself  to  rulers,  it  was 
repeatedly  made  the  religion  of  the  court  in  despotic  gov- 
ernments.    In  the  North  of  India  it  became  the  state  reli- 

^Cycle  of  Cathay,  p.  196. 

The  Moslems  have  been  —  in  certain  particulars  —  less  assertive 
and  more  tactful  in  the  Celestial  Empire  than  in  some  other 
realms,  compromising  with  old  customs  so  far  as  they  may,  and 
leaving  off  the  minaret  from  the  mosque  lest  it  seem  to  overtop 
the  native  temples. —  Great  Religions,  p.  72.     New  York,  1901. 

=Rhys  Davids'  Buddhism,  p.  180;  Monier-Williams'  Buddhism, 
p.  557;  Bunsen's  God  in  History,  Vol.  I,  p.  371;  Earth's  Religions 
of  India,  p.  121,  Wood's  tl.     London,  1882. 


AS  A  SELF-EXTENDING  POWER.  351 

gion  within  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  the  death  of 
Oautama.  It  flourished,  too,  in  Central  India  for  a  thou- 
sand years.  In  Ceylon,  it  was  preached  three  hundred 
years  before  Christ;  it  entered  China  A.  D.  65;  Burmah 
in  the  fifth  Christian  century;  Siam  in  the  seventh,  and 
Thibet  at  about  the  same  era.  For  two  or  three  hundred 
years  it  was  known  to  Japan,  and  finally  it  gained  the 
ascendency  there  in  the  ninth  century.  During  twelve  hun- 
dred years  it  was  a  steadily  advancing  religion  in  Asia,  exer- 
cising great  influence  upon  a  densely  peopled  district  one- 
half  larger  than  Europe.  It  allied  itself  to  the  prevailing 
religion  of  each  country  it  entered,  whether  spirit  worship- 
pers in  Burmah,  Shintoists  in  Japan,  Taoists  and  Confu- 
cianists  in  China :  much  as  Christianity  allied  itself  to  the 
paganism  of  Northern  Europe  by  baptizing  unregenerate 
peoples.  Its  ameliorating  influence  was  everywhere  felt. 
While  Confucianism  provided  the  moral  basis  of  Chinese 
character,  the  supernatural  elements  wanting  were  sup- 
plied by  Taoism  and  Buddhism :  to  Gautama  is  due  the 
elevation  of  the  popular  mind  from  the  too  exclusive  con- 
sideration of  mundane  affairs,  to  contemplate  a  future  state, 
to  value  more  highly  purity  of  life,  to  exercise  self-con- 
straint, to  forget  self,  and  to  practise  love  and  charity 
toward  others.^  The  self-extending  power  of  the  Sangha  — 
the  community  of  Buddhist  mendicant  monks  —  was,  how- 
ever, limited  from  within :  when  prospered  and  enriched 
the  monastery  ' '  gradually  ceased  in  great  measure  to  be  the 
school  of  virtue  and  the  most  favorable  sphere  of  intellec- 
tual progress,  and  became  thronged  with  the  worthless  and 
idle."-  Buddhism  was  driven  out  of  India  by  the  Brah- 
mans,  after  it  had  maintained  itself  ten  centuries;  before 
it  went  out,  however,  the  Sangha  had  become  wealthy,  idle, 
corrupt  in  doctrine,  and  in  practice  reverting  to  pagan 
types.     In  like  manner  it  reached  its  limit  as  a  peculiarly 

'The  statements  in  this  sentence  are  based  upon  Professor  R.  K. 
Douglas'  China,  pp.  328,  329. 
^Rhys  Davids'  Buddhism,  p.  153. 


352  BUDDHISM. 

beneficent  power  throughout  Asia;  as  an  altruistic  social 
factor  lacking  the  power  of  continuous  advancement,  sooner 
or  later  reaching  a  standstill.  If,  however,  the  light  of 
Asia  suffered  an  eclipse,  were  there  not  also  dark  ages  in 
Christendom?  The  possible  vagaries  of  ill-informed  and 
unbalanced  Buddhists  in  far-away  ages,  upon  a  distant 
continent,  in  obscure  historic  periods,  will  be  looked  upon, 
leniently  by  those  who  are  forced  to  exercise  their  charity 
in  reading  Christian  history. 

At  the  present  day  an  official  head  presides  over  each, 
monastery,  and  every  mendicant  monk  takes  vows  to  be  free 
from  lust,  from  the  desire  of  property,  from  taking  life^ 
and  from  the  assumption  of  supernatural  powers.^  To  sow 
discord  in  the  Sangha  is  sin.  In  Southern  Asia  the  conduct 
of  the  Brotherhood  —  their  self-restraint  and  observance  of 
the  decorum  of  their  profession, —  is  universally  esteemed 
by  the  people.-  After  making  due  allowance  for  rogues  whO' 
came  into  hospitable  monastery  doors  carelessly  left  open, 
the  Sangha  must  have  had  within  its  walls  for  many  cen- 
turies, the  most  spiritually  minded  men  in  the  distinctively 
Buddhist  lands  of  Eastern  Asia.  This  period  varies  in  the 
different  countries  from  perhaps  thirty  to  sixty-five  gener- 
ations ;  it  being  socially  a  great  power  through  the  presenta- 
tion of  an  ideal  of  conduct,  which  made  itself  felt  even 
among  the  intensely  practical,  industrious,  and  virtually 
godless  Chinese.  By  no  means,  however,  must  it  be  thought 
that  this  power  has  been  very  positive  in  all  these  ages. 
The  monk  by  the  very  theory  of  his  life  must  take  no 
interest  in  worldly  affairs.^  The  Sangha  brethren  are  not 
shepherds  with  pastoral  care.  The  chief  imperative  duty, 
which  brings  them  into  contact  with  the  world  outside  the 
monastery,  is  that  of  seeing  to  it  that  the  laity  acquire  so 
much  merit  as  they  can  earn  by  giving  daily  food  and  alms 

'Fielding's  The  Soul  of  a  People,  p.  131. 

^Fielding;  Bishop  Bigaudet;  Nisbet  in  his  Burma  under  British. 
Rule. 
^Soul  of  a  People,  p.  133. 


THE  SANGHA.  353 

to  the  mendicants,  who  go  by  thousands  every  morning  to 
every  door  in  their  district.  In  return  for  this,  however, 
it  is  expected  by  their  patrons  that  they  will  receive  the 
boys  of  their  neighborhood,  teach  them  to  read,  and  instruct 
them  in  the  rudiments  of  their  faith.  As  to  religion,  in  no 
sense  are  these  brethren  priests.  There  is  no  duty  of  inter- 
cession. In  any  given  monastery  there  are  always  pure- 
minded,  zealously  affected  brethren,  who  faithfully  read 
and  expound  the  Buddhist  books  upon  stated  occasions, 
like  festal  days:  and  to  those  who  do  it,  there  is  an  incre- 
ment of  moral  merit.  In  Southern  Asia  the  mendicants 
abide  in  temporary  rural  quarters  in  the  hot  season,  and 
on  moonlight  nights  they  read  the  sacred  books  to  the 
peasantry. 

To  the  Western  mind  the  number  of  monks  seems  incred- 
ible. The  Siamese  gifts  to  the  mendicants  amount  to  half 
a  million  dollars  a  week.^  This  would  be  two  hundred  mil- 
lions a  year  in  a  population  as  large  as  that  of  the  United 
States.  There  are  ten  thousand  monks  in  Bangkok.  Bur- 
mah  has  more  than  fifteen  thousand  monasteries, —  one  to 
every  ninety-three  dwelling  houses.-  There  are  extended 
districts  in  AVestern  China,  where  the  lamas  compose  one- 
third  of  the  male  population.  Looked  at  with  a  view  to  its 
universal  extension,  is  there  not  reason  to  doubt  whethcF 
this  monkish  system, —  the  very  kernel  of  Buddhism  — 
which  sets  forth  life  without  work  as  an  ideal,  an  eating 
solely  of  the  bread  of  beggary,  is  so  well  adapted  to  the 
West  as  to  the  East  ?  Is  a  progressive  civilization  possible 
under  such  leadership?  The  monastic  feature  of  with- 
drawal from  society  was  one  of  the  causes  that  led  to  the 
overturn  of  Buddhism  in  India.  It  cannot  be  imagined 
that  Confucius,  with  his  hard  good  sense,  should  either 
have  lived  as  a  recluse  for  years  or  set  anybody  else  to 
doing  it.     Confucians,  as  representing  the  intellectual  and 

^Historical  Sketches  Presbyterian  Missions,  p.  244.  Philadel- 
phia, 1891. 

-Nisbet,  Burma  under  British  Rule,  p.  128. 

23 


354 


BUDDHISM. 


civic  power  in  China,  have  never  taken  kindly  to  the  celi- 
bate life  recommended  by  the  Prince  of  India,  or  the  with- 
drawal of  so  much  working  force  from  the  world  of  work 
as  the  Sangha  makes  needful;  idleness  and  the  neglect  of 
social  duties  they  cannot  put  up  with;  and  their  orderly 
sense  of  the  fitness  of  things  is  disturbed  by  the  fact  that 
the  Sangha  not  only  draws  young  men  away  from  filial 
duties,  but  points  to  the  destruction  of  ancient  families  by 
the  loss  of  sons. 

There  are  three  considerations  that  militate  against  the 
adaptation  of  the  monastic  system  to  world-wide  sway : — 

One  is  the  legitimate  outgrowth  of  their  dogmatic  litera- 
ture,—  the  repression  of  desire  as  a  basal  tenet,  the  utter 
absence  of  interest  in  all  the  affairs  of  society :  this  operates 
like  a  narcotic,  the  opiate  of  Asia.  The  brethren  in  South- 
ern Asia  to-day  are  reported  by  English  residents  as  sitting 
all  day  cross-legged,  yawning  or  dozing,  and  for  the  most 
part  not  engaged  in  intellectual  exercises.  This  has  been, 
to  a  great  extent,  the  Sangha  custom  in  Eastern  Asia  for  a 
period  varying  from  one  to  two  thousand  years.  The 
monks  appear  to  Europeans  to  be  ill-informed,  not  studious, 
and  separate  from  any  active  interest  in  the  social  evolu- 
tion of  their  own  people.  In  China,  the  mendicants  are,  as 
a  rule,  mere  idlers,  with  a  few  painstaking  students  among 
them. 

For  another  thing,  the  self-extension  of  Buddhism,  in 
former  "ages,  led  to  a  permanent  alliance  with  incongruous 
systems  of  thought,  and  of  life  practice  diametrically 
opposed  to  that  entertained  by  Gautama.  Witness  the  hier- 
archy of  Tibet,  with  its  six  priestly  grades.  Nor  is  Islam 
in  any  part  of  the  world  more  bigoted  or  intolerant  than 
Buddhism  in  Mongolia  and  Tibet.^  The  monks  of  Tibet 
are  not  only  indolent  and  corrupt,  but  the  people  hope- 
lessly poor  and  the  government  despotic.  Such  phases  of 
Buddhism  to-day  are  to  be  reckoned  with  when  the  question 

Wide  Dr.  James  Gilmour's  Among  the  Mongols,  pp.  196,  208; 
and  Rockhill's  Land  of  the  Lamas,  passim.    London,  1893. 


ITS  PRESENT  FAn.URE  AS  A  SOCIAL  FORCE.  355 

comes  up  of  the  adaptation    of    the    system  to  universal 
acceptance. 

Yet  the  worst  defect,  and  that  most  fatal  to  self-extend- 
ing domination  in  this  age,  is  the  lack  of  an  efficient 
provision  for  examining  applicants  for  admission  to  the 
monasteries.  The  Sacred  Books  of  Buddha  make  no  such 
searching  provision  for  monastic  purity  as  the  Bible  makes 
for  the  moral  purity  of  the  Christian  Church  and  ministry. 
The  Old  Testament  demanded  it,  the  New  insisted  upon  it. 
Oautama,  the  Prince  of  India,  was  rigid  with  himself, 
exacting  the  uttermost  virtue  of  Avhich  he  was  capable,  yet 
the  safeguards  which  he  provided  against  the  reception  into 
the  holy  fold  of  irresponsible  persons,^  whose  presence  is 
inimical  to  the  well-being  of  the  monastic  community,  were 
not  maintained  in  subsequent  ages.  Bishop  Bigaudet, 
residing  for  some  years  in  Burmah,  states  that  there  are 
many  worthless  monks  unfit  for  their  calling,  since  all  com- 
ers are  received  without  examination.  Bishop  Smith  tells 
the  same  story  of  China,  that  many  persons  of  immoral  life 
have  been  received  as  holy  men  to  the  monasteries  where  they 
get  a  comfortable  living  by  begging  with  their  brethren. - 
Doctor  Gilmour  cites  cases  known  to  him  in  Mongolia,  in 
which  men  went  to  live  as  lamas  with  the  lamas  when  out  of 
other  work,  and  then  returned  to  secular  service  when  they 
could  do  better.  The  Protestant  Episcopal  Bishop  Sche- 
reschewsky,  late  of  Shanghai,  testifies:  "For  more  than 
twenty  years  I  have  been  a  student  of  Buddhism ;  I  have 
thoroughly   studied  the   Buddhist  books,  which  in  them- 

'Coveting  and  theft,  malice  and  the  taking  of  life,  adultery, 
lying,  slander  and  vain  conversation  were  forbidden  in  early 
mendicant  rules. 

Note  by  Db.  E.  W.  Hopkins. — Buddha  expressly  provided  that 
no  known  sinners  should  be  admitted  into  the  Order,  and  that  no 
one  should  be  admitted  who  sought  it  as  an  excuse  for  idleness, 
and  that  no  youth  should  be  received  without  parental  permis- 
sion. 

^'Compare  the  statements  in  Appendix  B.,  upon  the  Decadence 
of  Monasticism  in  Christendom. 


366  BUDDHISM. 

selves  constitute  a  vast  literature;  I  have  talked  with  hun- 
dreds of  Buddhist  priests, —  Chinese,  Mongolian,  and 
Tibetan;  I  have  visited  many  Buddhist  temples,  and  have 
even  lived  in  them.  Therefore,  laying  aside  all  mock 
modesty,  in  a  matter  so  closely  concerning  the  Church,  I 
feel  competent  to  state  that  a  more  gigantic  system  of  frauds 
superstition,  and  idolatry  than  Buddhism,  as  it  is  now, 
has  seldom  been  inflicted  by  any  false  religion  on  man- 
kind." This  was  through  his  personal  knowledge  of  the 
Monastic  Order,  as  it  exists  in  China.  President  W.  A. 
P.  Llartin  affirms  that  Buddhism  is  no  longer  doing  any- 
thing to  strengthen  or  renovate  Chinese  society;  that  the 
priests,  whose  ideal  of  a  future  bliss  is  to  think  of  nothing 
and  to  feel  nothing,  are  not  intellectual,  are  men  of  foolish 
faces,  and  eyes  fixed  on  vacuity  —  that  they  are  lazy,  igno- 
rant, and  immoral,  indelicate,  vicious,  filthy, —  that  with 
few  exceptions  the  priesthood  has  sunk  into  the  condition  of 
an  ignorant  and  despised  caste. ^  Urga,  the  headquarters  of 
Buddhism  in  Northern  Mongolia,  with  seven  thousand  inhab- 
itants, is  notoriously  the  wickedest  town  in  that  country.- 
One  of  the  worst  towns  in  Japan,  morally,  Onomichi,  has 
one  Buddhist  temple  for  every  three  hundred  and  seventy- 
five  inhabitants.^  Two  years  ago  Doctor  Thorold,  fresh  from 
journeying  with  Captain  Bower  across  Tibet,  made  special 
inquiries  as  to  Buddhism,  and  he  affirmed  that  the  people 
were  not  so  much  immoral  as  unmoral,  having  no  conception 
of  virtue.*  Lansdell,  in  his  w^ork  on  Chinese  Central  Asia, 
speaks  of  it  as  generally  assumed  that  the  Kalmuck  lamas 
are  immoral.     Of  the  patients  treated  in  a  foreign  hospital 

'Cycle  of  Cathay,  pp.  38,  227,  244.     Lore  of  Cathay,  p.  241. 

-Gilmour's  Among  the  Mongols,  p.  140. 

^Land  of  the  Lamas,  p.  91.     New  York,  1891. 

*Yet  unv/orthy  monks  are  subject  to  discipline  in  Tibet  as  in 
Southern  Asia.  And  it  is  gratifying  to  note  wliat  is  said  by 
Rockhill  (Vol.  I,  p.  259.  London,  1893).— "While  I  do  not  believe 
the  standard  would  be  considered  very  high  by  us,  there  are  large 
numbers  who  observe  moral  lives.  Not  a  few  strictly  adhere  to 
the  vows  of  chastity,  poverty,  and  truthfulness." 


ITS   DECADENCE.  357 

in  Japan  a  few  years  ago,  one  out  of  three,  treated  for  dis- 
eases resulting-  from  immorality,  was  a  Buddhist  monk.^ 
It  is  one  of  the  curious  features  of  the  case,  that  monks 
rarely  take  the  vows  for  life,^  that  one  may  leave  at  any 
time  and  be  amenable  only  to  the  rules  that  g:overn  the 
laity  ;^  so  it  is  made  easy  to  escape  discipline  and  be  re-ad- 
mitted. All  of  which  goes  to  show  how  hard  it  is  to  attempt 
to  realize  personal  purity  of  life,  and  to  follow  the  self- 
sacrificing  spirit  of  their  Prince. 

Nor  have  twenty-three  centuries  produced  vital  force  and 
spiritual  power  enough  to  meet  the  conditions ;  with  a  great 
continent  to  work  in,  Buddhism  has  failed  to  make  Asia 
what  Europe  and  America  have  been  made  by  Christianit3^ 
It  is  like  a  spent  force.  So  it  looks  to  foreign  residents, 
long  conversant  with  the  Orient,  who  are  in  position  to  be 
well  informed  concerning  the  moral  efficiency  of  the  mendi- 
cants.* Yet  the  Eastern  mind  clings  to  antiquity.  The 
positive  elements  in  Confucianism  contrast  strongly  in  the 
Chinese  mind  with  the  Buddhist  negations;  and,  for  moral 
advice,  they  both  have  it.  Yet  China  to-day  thinks  of  Bud- 
dhism as  an  ancient  system,  widely  held  in  Asia,  never  in 
China  interfering  with  the  government,  possessing  a  vast 
number  of  temples,  having  a  great  body  of  Sacred  Books, 
and  it  is  believed  that  there  are  many  living  Buddhas,  rein- 
carnations, in  the  grand  lamas  of  to-day.  Meantime,  some 
of  the  most  thoughtful  of  the  Chinese  look  askance  at 
Christianity,  and  at  the  different  forms  of  it  —  Roman, 
Oreek,  and  Protestant.  Nor  can  they  be  dislodged  from 
their  position,  unless  through  living  proof  that  Christianity 
is  better  in  renewing  moral  character.  Much  more  is  this 
true  of  Southern  Asia,  where  Buddhism  exists  in  a  more 

^Report  of  Missionary  Conference  in  Japan.  Vide  also  testi- 
mony of  Professor  Gordon  of  the  Doshisha,  p.  1294,  Vol.  II,  Par- 
liament of  Religions.    Chicago,  1894. 

'Soul  of  a  People,  pp.  147,  148. 

""Nisbet,  II,  134. 

^Vide  President  Martin's  statements.  The  World's  Parliament  of 
Religions,  II,  p.  1139.     Chicago,  1893. 


358 


BUDDHISM. 


pure  form.  That  the  favored  lands  of  Gautama  evince  in 
some  quarters  a  revived  interest  in  their  faith/  at  least  to 
hold  their  own  against  an  aggressive  Christianity,  is  of 
great  sociological  interest.  The  altruistic  service  to  human- 
ity rendered  by  Singhalese  mendicants  follows  along  lines 
already  opened  by  Christian  philanthropists.  More  zeal 
is  displayed  in  education,  and  in  transmitting  the  ancient 
texts  in  their  purity.  And  the  versatile,  alert  Japanese,  in 
readjusting  their  antique  realm  and  fitting  it  to  the  needs 
of  a  progressive  people,  have  undertaken  to  make  Buddhism 
more  worthy  of  its  ancient  mission  as  a  social  reform. 
Instructions  have  been  issued  by  the  government,  within  a 
few  years,  addressed  to  the  Shinto  and  Buddhist  mendi- 
cants: "Priests  who  are  charged  with  the  grave  duty  of 
propagating  religious  doctrines,  ought  to  combine  both 
learning  and  virtue  so  as  to  command  the  respect  of  the  peo- 
ple. It  is  nevertheless  commonly  reported  that  of  the 
priests  now  in  holy  orders  not  a  few  are  distinguished 
neither  by  learning  nor  by  virtuous  conduct,  and  are 
entirely  unfitted  for  their  posts. ' '  The  instructions  then  go. 
on  to  say  that  the  cause  of  decay  of  the  old  religions  is  to  be 
found  in  the  low  educational  and  moral  grade  of  the  priests. 
They  are  urged  to  require  the  education  of  all  priests  to  a 
degree  equal  at  least  to  the  colleges  of  America  in  addition 
to  a  thorough  training  in  the  tenets  of  their  religion.  This 
act  of  the  government  will  doubtless  have  considerable 
effect  in  raising  the  standard  of  scholarship. - 

What  is  needed,  however,  is  far  more  than  this,  if  this 
ancient  cult  is  to  become  a  match  for  Christianity  in  seek- 
ing universal  dominion.  Buddha  is  revered  in  Southern 
Asia,  but  not  worshipped.  In  China,  Buddhism  lost  its 
distinctive  features  eighteen  hundred  years  ago,  and  became 
hopelessly  intertwined  with  Confucianism  and  Taoism. 
Yet  in  Japan,  among  more  than  a  score  of  divergent  Bud- 

^Rhys  Davids  in  Oreat  Religions  of  the  World,  pp.  42-49. 
'J.  L.  Deei'ing,  D.  D.,  of  Yoliohama,  in  the  Independent.    New- 
York,  July,  1895. 


ITS   POSSIBLE   REVIVAL,  359 

dhist  sects,  some  give  high  place  to  the  worship  of  Buddha, 
apparently  finding  in  it  a  motive  power  unknown  to  those 
who  more  nearly  approach  the  agnostic  attitude  of  Gautama 
himself,  whose  outlook  upon  society  is  negative  and  desire- 
less.  If,  now,  there  is  anywhere  in  Buddhistic  realms  the 
power  to  enter  seriously  upon  the  work  of  self-extension 
throughout  the  earth  in  the  centuries  close  at  hand,  is  it 
not  here  that  we  are  to  look  for  it? 

What  better  test  is  there  of  a  system  of  faith  or  philoso- 
phy than  its  ability  to  adapt  itself  to  a  new  age  without 
utterly  cutting  itself  off  from  its  own  past,  or  rather  to 
create  a  new  age  by  normally  unfolding  new  life  and  unsus- 
pected powers,  so  gaining  a  new  hold  upon  mankind  ?  Let 
Brahmanism,  let  Buddhism,  be  put  to  this  test;  can  they 
return  to  the  earliest  and  purest  fountains?  And  if  they 
do,  can  they,  by  doing  it,  meet  the  wants  of  this  identical 
hour?  The  Eeformation  of  Christianity  in  the  sixteenth 
century  was  but  a  return  to  the  primal  principles  of  the 
charter  of  the  Church,  in  the  Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  the 
New  Testament,  which  based  the  kingdom  of  love  upon 
regenerated  individual  lives,  lives  upon  a  spiritual  plane 
with  God  as  to  life's  main  purpose,  individual  lives  the 
humblest  energized  by  the  divine  touch.  Not  other  than 
this  was  the  ideal  entertained  by  the  most  spiritual  minds 
in  the  Church,  for  centuries  upon  centuries,  prior  to  the 
Eeformation.  It  was  Voltaire,  who,  upon  looking  over  the 
history  of  Europe,  attested  to  the  fact  that  the  denounced 
ecclesiastics  were  better  than  the  average  of  the  people. 
The  moral  evolution  was  inside  the  Church.  The  worst  of 
the  Christian  pontiffs  was  a  pattern  of  propriety  when  com- 
pared with  contemporary  potentates,  and  the  Church  a  very 
lily  among  thorns.  There  is  no  historical  position  more 
tenable  than  this.  The  Reformed  Church  did  not  break 
with  its  own  past,  but  seized  upon  the  principles  which 
governed  the  early  ages  when  individual  regeneration, 
rather  than  the  wholesale  baptizing  of  pagans,  was  the 
method  of  advancing  the  Church.    Let  Japan  then  see  to 


360 


BUDDHIST  AND  CHRISTIAN 


it  that  whatever  is  best  in  Shintoism  and  Buddhism  be 
brought  forth.  Of  Buddhist  or  Shinto  parentage,  and, 
trained  from  their  youth  up,  in  these  ancient  faiths,  let  the 
men  of  moral  power  adapt  these  philosophies  and  religions 
to  a  new  age,  and  test  whatever  ethical  power  is  in  them. 
Out  of  nearly  seventy  thousand  Shinto  and  Buddhist 
priests  in  Japan,  seventy-six  out  of  a  hundred  are  enrolled 
as  disciples  of  Gautama.  There  is  already  a  moral  awaken- 
ing among  them.  They  are  tactfully  adopting  Christian 
methods  in  promoting  Young  Men's  Associations.  Shaka, 
the  great  Shinto  founder,  is  arousing  an  unwonted  popular 
enthusiasm.  The  Reformed  Buddhism  of  Japan  has 
already  shocked  the  shade  of  Gautama  by  allowing  priests 
to  marry.  1  Suppose,  noAV,  that  in  a  purely  altruistic  spirit, 
the  Japanese  Buddhists  duplicate  in  Christendom,  what 
Christianity  has  already  wrought  in  Japan : — 

Were  this  to  be  so,  should  we  not  find,  among  university 
students  in  America,  England  and  Germany,  a  great  many 
youth  becoming  Buddhists?  Then,  too,  we  should  find, 
within  the  next  forty  years,  three  hundred  and  sixty-five 
Buddhist  monasteries  established  within  the  present  limits 
of  Christendom ;  ninety-two  of  them  in  New  York,  London, 
or  Berlin.  We  should  find  nine-tenths  as  many  mendicant 
monks  in  America  —  if  this  be  the  field  for  concentrated 
effort  —  as  there  are  Congregational  pastors  in  New  Eng- 
land. We  should  find  enrolled  among  American  Buddhists 
not  fewer  than  forty  judges  of  superior  courts,  some  of  them 
in  the  supreme  court,  together  with  prominent  members  of 
Congress.  We  should  find  eminent  Buddhist  educators 
visiting  miscellaneous  assemblies  in  England  or  America, 

^Lo7-e  of  Cathay,  p.  263. 

Certain  Japanese  Buddhist  sects  that  arose  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  A.  D.,  have  continued  to  this  day.  They  won  multitudes 
to  their  faith,  which  differed  greatly  from  that  of  Gautama:  the 
idea  of  a  Western  paradise  taking  the  place  of  Nirvana,  a  mythi- 
cal Amida  replacing  Buddha,  and  the  monks  giving  up  celibacy. 
These  are  the  progressive  Buddhists  of  to-day. —  Vide  Knox's 
Fourth  Loioell  Lecture.     1905. 


EXTENSION  IN   JAPAN.  361 

and  picking  out  the  Buddhists  by  their  brighter,  more 
thoughtful,  more  purposeful  faces.  These  figures  represent 
what  Christianity  has  already  wrought  in  Japan.  Let  Bud- 
dhism duplicate  this  work  in  Christendom.^ 

If  this  cannot  be  done,  it  would  not  be  unlike  the  agile 
Japanese,  so  self-reliant,  so  progressive,  so  independent,  to 
push  to  the  utmost  verge  liberty  of  conscience, —  disillu- 
sionizing their  nation  concerning  forms  of  faith  that  have 
long  had  a  hold  on  the  general  mind  —  which  have,  how- 
ever, been  long  unfruitful  of  new  ideas,  powerless  for 
ethical  regeneration, —  and  promote  the  general  acceptance 
of  Christianity,  which  has  already  proved  to  be  singularly 
adapted  to  the  genius  of  their  people.-  Has  not  He  who 
made  all  nations  of  one  blood,  set  to  flowing  the  vital  cur- 
rents of  renewed  life  among  diverse  peoples?  Japanese 
Christianity  will  be  forever  different  from  the  Puritan  type, 
the  Roman  type  or  the  Greek,  the  Hebrew,  or  the  Anglican, 
rendering  for  itself  a  unique  service  to  the  Kingdom  of  God, 
in  a  spirit  of  self-sacrificing  loyalty  and  leadership  making 
known  the  love  of  Christ  throughout  the  most  densely 
peopled  provinces  of  Asia. 

The  present  number  of  Buddhists  in  the  world,  it  is 
difficult  to  estimate.  Of  the  four  hundred  and  twenty 
millions,  which  European  statisticians  are  agreed  upon  as 
the  Chinese  population,^  incalculable  numbers  are  of  mixed 

'It  took  Christianity  three  centuries  to  effect  in  the  Roman 
empire  changes  that  Christianity  has  wrought  in  Japan  in  less 
than  one  generation.  As  to  domestic  life,  there  has  come  in  a 
new  idea.  Public  opinion  has  a  new  standard.  There  is  more 
Christianity  in  the  Japanese  government  to-day  than  there  was 
in  Rome  under  Constantine. 

-Already  Christianity  is  recognized  as  one  of  the  three  forces 
shaping  the  new  nation,  and  in  spite  of  the  known  moral  defects 
of  Christendom,  a  profession  of  Christianity  has  come  to  be  fash- 
ionable in  Japan. —  Vide  Chamberlain's  -'Things  Japanese,"  p.  240; 
De  Forest's  "Sunrise  in  the  Sunrise  Kingdom" ;  and  Dr.  Sidney 
L.  Gulick's  Lecture  in  Boston  before  the  Schoolmasters'  Club, 
April,  1905. 

^R.  K.  Douglas'  Europe  and  the  Far  East,  p.  33.  London,  1904. 
Compare  Martin's  Cycle  of  Cathay,  p.  460. 


362  THE  NUMBER  OP   BUDDHISTS 

faith.^  The  tenets  of  Confucius,  says  Martin,  form  the  bed 
rock  of  Chinese  civilization ;  every  Buddhist  and  Taoist  is 
first  of  all  a  Confucianist,  but  the  converse  is  by  no  means 
true,  the  more  educated  rejecting  the  other  sects;  hence  a 
common  error  in  estimating  the  number  of  Buddhists  in 
the  world.-  Professor  Khys  Davids,  in  summing  up  the 
present  influence  of  Gautama,^  estimates  five  hundred  mil- 
lions of  people  as  offering  flowers  upon  Buddhist  shrines, 
"not  one  of  whom  is  only  or  altogether  a  Buddhist."  Pro- 
fessor M.  Monier- Williams*  states  that  there  is  a  popular 
error  in  regard  to  the  total  number  of  Buddhists.     By  com- 

'Edkins'  Religion  of  China,  pp.  58-60.  Third  Edition,  London, 
1884.    Monier-Williams'  Buddhism,  p.   552. 

^Lore  of  Cathay,  p.  241. 

Note  upon  the  Three  Religions  of  China. —  Chinese  Buddhism 
is  idealistic,  its  modes  of  thought  and  phraseology  prevail  widely 
throughout  the  empire  (Samuel  Beal).  Its  priests  administer 
funeral  rites,  and  say  masses  for  the  soul.  The  Taoists  are  well 
organized,  with  a  high-priest:  they  are  materialists,  they  are 
magicians;  to  secure  freedom  from  annoyance  by  spirits  they 
select  localities  for  building  or  burial;  they  exorcise  evil  spirits, 
when  visiting  the  sick.  Popular  worship  of  the  spiritual  types  of 
animals  —  as  the  snake,  the  hedgehog,  the  weasel,  and  in  Peking 
the  fox, —  is  Taoist.  The  religion  of  the  women  is  affected  by 
Buddhist  and  Taoist;  but  aside  from  the  priests  the  men  almost 
without  exception  prefer  to  be  classed  as  followers  of  Confucius, 
whose  image  they  reverence  in  their  school  days,  and  whose  word 
is  forever  cited  by  the  publicists  of  the  empire.  Although  the 
imperial  patronage  avails  for  the  three  religions  in  their  joint 
sv/ay  over  many  minds,  and  although  the  people  say  that  the 
three  constitute  one  religion  —  that  part  having  most  sway  over 
one  for  which  he  has  peculiar  affinity, —  yet  Confucianism 
undoubtedly  stands  forth  as  the  leading  religion  of  the  empire, 
inculcating  not  only  orderliness  within  the  state,  but  the  worship 
of  the  powers  of  nature,  the  worship  of  ancestors  and  of  national 
heroes. 

Consult  Martin's  Lore  of  Cathay,  pp.  178,  184,  191;  and  Cycle  of 
Cathay,  p.  289.  These  statements  must  effectively  dispose  of  any 
claim  that  Buddhism  has  the  right  to  enroll  the  entire  populatiou 
of  China. 

^Buddhism,  p.  8. 

'Pp.  XV,  xvii.  Buddhism. 


IN   THE   WORLD.  363 

paring  his  own  judgment  with  that  of  Professor  Legge  of 
Oxford,  and  most  eminent  authorities,  as  to  the  per  cent,  of 
Buddhists  in  China,  he  reaches  the  conclusion  that  some- 
what more  than  a  hundred  millions  for  all  Asia  would  be 
the  proper  estimate.  This  reckoning  was  based  upon  the 
assumption  that,  for  the  most  part,  the  Chinese  are  first  and 
last  Confucianists,  and  that  their  classification  as  Taoists 
and  Buddhists  is  altogether  secondary,  nor  can  it  be  other- 
wise unless  each  of  the  Chinese  be  counted  two  or  three 
times. 

The  natural  increase  of  Buddhism  in  expanding  popula- 
tions where  the  births  have  been  for  a  long  period  in  excess 
of  the  deaths,  has  been  the  only  manifestation  of  self -ex- 
tending power  during  many  centuries,  there  having  been 
no  new  peoples  brought  within  sway  for  nearly  a  thousand 
years.  This  throws  light  upon  the  question  whether  or  not 
Buddhism  is  likely  to  obtain  universal  dominion. 

IV. 

The  exclusive  policy  adopted  by  China  and  pursued  con- 
sistently for  a  hundred  generations,  is  answer  enough  to 
the  question  whether  Confucianism  is  ever  likely  to  extend 
itself  to  all  nations.  Through  their  ordinary  intercourse 
with  neighboring  peoples,  the  statesmen  and  merchants 
carried  the  teachings  of  Confucius,  ages  ago,  to  Formosa, 
half  as  large  as  Ireland;  to  Cochin  China,  as  large  as 
France;  to  Corea  and  Japan:  in  every  instance  it  was  of 
definite  advantage  in  raising  the  standard  of  morals. 
Within  the  nation,  moreover,  every  class  is  dominated  by 
the  spirit  of  Confucius,  and  "his  work  is  recognized  as 
law  to  the  most  august  emperor  on  the  throne,  as  well  as  to 
the  meanest  peasant  at  the  plow. '  '^ 

It  has,  however,  come  to  pass  that  China  is  filled  with  the 
sins  of  her  youth.     Peculation  and  extortions  have  been  too 

^Wu  Ting-fang,  late  Chinese  Minister  plenipotentiary  to  the 
United  States.— J^ew  York  Address. 


364  THE    EMPIRE    OF    CONFUCIUS. 

long  considered  as  rights  by  the  official  classes.  The  sale  of 
justice  or  of  injiLstice  has  too  long  passed  without  rebuke. 
The  wickedness  of  one  generation  has  been  the  capitalized 
wickedness  of  the  next.  With  money  in  hand  anything 
could  be  accomplished.  Public  offices  were  bought  and  sold ; 
robbers,  pirates,  rebels,  bought  off  and  taken  into  public 
service.  Has  China  lost  the  power  of  recuperation?  Are 
her  moral  resources  exhausted  ?  Has  she  no  expedients  for 
self-deliverance  ?     Are  the  ethics  of  her  sages  a  spent  force 

—  her  nomenclature  of  morality  without  significance  ?  She 
retains  the  words,  such  as  benevolence,  wisdom,  rectitude, 
righteousness,  uprightness,  truthfulness  and  good  faith ;  but 
are  they  clouds  without  water,  carried  about  of  the  winds  ?^ 

There  are  eighteen  provinces  in  the  empire :  fifteen  hun- 
dred subdivisions,  each  of  which  has  a  chief  town;  and  in 
each  subdivision  there  are  hundreds  of  "villages"  or  petty 
cities,  in  some  of  which  there  are  thousands  of  families. 
Amid  all  this  dense  hive  of  people,  love  to  God  and  love  to 
man  is  not  an  element  in  any  religious  system  indigenous  to 
China;  yet  with  their  ages  of  seclusion,  antique  supersti- 
tions and  scantiness  of  information,  the  strong  and  sturdy 
people, —  of  fine  physique,  amazing  vitality,  great  intellec- 
tual capacity,  inured  to  hard  labor,  practical,  patient,  cheer- 
ful and  industrious, —  look  upon  Christian  foreigners  as 
uncultivated  heathen.     The  auditors  of  any  missionary  are 

—  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  them, —  loafers,  coolies,  farmers, 
and  small  tradesmen.-  It  is  not  uncommon,  however,  to 
find  able  men  among  these  uneducated  classes.  And  among 
the  untaught  and  undisciplined  common  people  are  to  be 
found  women  of  great  intellectual  capacity.^ 

Although  the  general  opening  of  China  to  Western 
philanthropists  was  hardly  fifty  years  ago,  the  extension 
of  Christianity  is  already  notable.  To  compare  present 
results    with    a    well    known    district    of    six    millions    of 

^This  paragraph  is  suggested  by  an  address  at  the  Ecumenical 
Conference,  New  York,  1900,  by  Dr.  William  Ashmore,  of  Swatow. 
^Arthur  H.  Smith. 
'Lo7-e  of  Cathay,  p.  83. 


THE   PRESENT   CHRISTIAN  PLANTING,  365 

people  in  America,  it  may  be  said  that  the  Congrega- 
tional churches  are  peculiarly  strong  in  New  England, — 
Maine,  New  Hampshire,  Vermont,  Massachusetts,  Rhode 
Island  and  Connecticut.  There  are  as  many  members  of 
Christian  churches  in  China^  as  there  are  resident  Congre- 
gational church  members  in  Vermont  and  New  Hampshire  ; 
and  they  give,  to  promote  Christianity,  more  than  those  two 
states  and  Maine  give  to  the  American  Board  of  Missions. 
The  Christian  families  in  China  comprise  a  population 
approximating  the  total  number  of  resident  Congregational 
church  members  in  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island  and  Con- 
necticut. The  Congregational  churches  in  Boston  do  not 
give  so  much  to  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  as  the  Christians  in 
China  give  to  support  the  Gospel  in  that  empire;  and 
the  Celestial  church  members  outnumber  those  of  Boston 
churches  three  to  one,  and  four  thousand  to  spare.  These 
converts  are  mechanics,  shopmen,  and  farmers.  Miss  Gor- 
don-Cumming  speaks  of  them  as  unsurpassed  in  self-denial, 
zeal,  and  devotedness.  The  influence  of  these  natives  is 
systematically  multiplied  by  schooling  from  their  teachers.^ 
By  this  means  every  foreign  philanthropic  worker  rapidly 
expands  his  work.  In  1883,  at  Wei  Hien,  six  workers,  so 
established,  extended  their  work  in  eight  years  to  ninety- 
seven  outstations,  gathering  fourteen  hundred  and  sixty- 
nine  communicants,  and  six  hundred  and  sixty  youth  into 
schools.  Lord  Wolseley  has  been  cited,  in  the  Strand  Maga- 
zine, as  believing  that  in  respect  to  staying  quality,  the 
Chinese  is  one  of  the  greatest  races  in  the  Avorld;  of  great 
physical  power,  with  a  contempt  for  soldiering,  but  capable 
of  becoming  a  conquering  power  under  suitable  leadership. 
The  Hon.  James  B.  Angell,  President  of  Michigan  Univer- 
sity, late  United  States  High  Commissioner  to  China,  has 

^The  statistics  here  given  relate  to  the  Protestant  missions:  the 
Roman  Catholic  enrollment  is  given  by  Bliss'  Cyclopedia,  as  about 
half  a  million;  by  the  Statesman's  Year  Book,  a  million. 

*Dr.  Hunter  Corbett,  of  Chefoo,  has  written  to  the  Author,  of 
eight  different  centres  for  such  instruction  by  trained  helpers: 
this  work  having  been  made  prominent  for  thirty  years. 


366  LACK  OF  CONFUCIAN  MISSIONS. 

said  that  the  Chinese  "are  a  slow,  steady-moving  people, 
with  pluck  and  endurance.  They  never  give  up.  When 
they  set  their  faces  toward  an  end,  they  go  to  it,  if  it  takes 
centuries. "^  ''They  have  great  staying  qualities,  and  I 
have  always  thought  that  if  they  should  become  well  estab- 
lished in  Christian  belief,  they  would  be  among  the  strongest 
disciples.  The  habits  and  intuitions  and  traditions  of  a 
people,  especially  in  regard  to  moral  and  spiritual  things, 
cannot  be  fundamentally  changed  in  a  day.  The  upbuild- 
ing of  Christian  character  in  China  is  a  slow  process,  which 
requires  time."^  By  President  Charles  D.  Tenney  it  is 
stated,  that  in  natural  ability,  the  Chinese  is  one  of  the  finest 
of  the  races.  When  once  imbued  with  moral  power,  it  will 
be  of  measureless  influence  in  all  that  makes  for  righteous- 
ness. 

The  foregoing  statements  are  not  without  significance,  as 
indicating  the  present  contrasting  attitudes  of  Confucian- 
ism and  of  Christianity  in  respect  to  self -extending  power. 
Western  philanthropists  in  China  speak  of  systematic  work 
for  the  extension  of  Christianity  within  the  empire  for  a 
future  period  of  five  or  six  centuries.^  To  match  this, 
Chinese  philanthropists  must  work  fifty  or  seventy-five 
years,  content  with  humble  beginnings,  to  establish  a  Con- 
fucianist  plant  among  the  natives  of  some  Christian  nation, 
and  secure  as  substantial  results  as  Christianity  can  now 
show  in  China,  and  then  plan  to  steadily  advance  the  work 
during  several  hundreds  of  years.  If  the  literary  class  in 
China  will  do  this,  Confucianism  will  again  advance  upon 
that  path  of  foreign  moral  conquest  which  has  been  abso- 
lutely abandoned  by  their  philosophers  and  sages;  there 
having  been  no  evidence  of  self-extending  power  since  the 
Confucian  philosophy  was  introduced  to  Japan  fourteen 
hundred  years  ago.     From  a  sociological  point  of  view,  it 

^Address  before  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.,  1883. 

^President  Augell's  personal  letter  to  the  Author. 

^Only  one  walled  city  out  of  every  six  in  China  is  now  occupied 
by  a  Christian  mission,  and  only  one  provincial  county  out  of 
every  five. 


THE  DAWN  OP  A  NEW  AGE.  3G7 

is  wholly  a  question  of  races  and  religions.  No  nation  on 
€arth  is  more  keen  than  China  for  trade  and  a  cunning  out- 
look for  the  main  chance.  A  new  era  is  now  dawning  upon 
that  ancient  realm.  It  is  mainly  a  matter  of  transportation, 
^nd  of  safety  for  capital  in  developing  the  amazing 
resources  of  the  country.  The  astute  merchants  and  far- 
sighted  statesmen  of  the  empire  will  be  factors  in  that 
industrial  evolution  which  will  change  the  face  of  the  com- 
mercial world, —  through  the  development  of  the  coal  and 
iron  mines,  the  manufacturing  interests,  and  the  steam  and 
•electrical  transportation  business  of  one-fourth  of  the 
human  race.  The  industrial  struggle  for  existence  which 
has  already  developed  so  great  intellectual  acumen  in  the 
northern  temperate  zone  upon  other  continents  will  produce 
captains  of  industry  to  master  unfavorable  conditions  in 
Northern  Asia.  It  is  therefore  now  or  never  for  Confucius 
and  Mencius.  Let  this  venerable  moral  power  put  forth 
its  strength  for  influencing  distant  nations;  else,  by  the 
mere  continuation  of  processes  already  begun  and  far 
advanced,  it  will  be  Christianity  which  will  win  in  the 
world-contest  for  moral  supremacy  and  the  leadership  of 
great  peoples. 

The  absence  of  any  popular  religious  enthusiasm  in 
China,  which  among  other  peoples  is  to  be  depended  upon 
as  a  motive  power,  is  an  element  of  national  weakness. 
The  lack  of  spiritual  life  in  the  Confucian  body^  is  an  ele- 
ment of  weakness  that  must  tell,  when  we  question  as  to  the 
future  expansion  of  this  philosophical  system. 

It  is  probably  true  that  there  is  nowhere  in  the  Celestial 
empire  opposition  to  Christianity  as  such,  and  that  the 
altruistic  enthusiasm  of  Western  philanthropists  will  win 
if  conducted  upon  the  lines  of  practical  wisdom.  So  shot 
through  and  through  is  China  with  the  superstitions  that 
are  fostered  by  Taoist  magicians,  which  have  received  the 
imperial  sanction,  that  he  indeed  must  be  a  wise  man  of  the 
"West  who  will  never  needlessly  disturb  celestial  suseepti- 
^Cycle  of  Cathay,  pp.  288,  289. 


368  THE   EXTENSION    OF   HINDUISM. 

bilities,  or  needlessly  cross  venerable  beliefs  that  are  so  often 
harmless.  Popular  tumults  and  mob  law  spring  out  of  a 
bitter  anti-foreign  prejudice,  when  the  native  faith  is  rudely- 
shocked,  as  it  may  be  by  so  building  a  railway  or  a  church, 
building  as  to  disturb  the  earth  spirits,  or  by  the  introduc- 
tion of  radical  industrial  changes  that  alarm  day  laborers.^ 
A  statesmanlike  presentation  of  the  fundamental  truths 
of  Christianity  so  rarely  meets  opposition,  that  it  is  now 
thought  by  most  intelligent  Chinese  that  Christianity  will 
supersede  Buddhist  and  Taoist  instruction.  And  by  some 
of  the  most  eminent  Occidental  philanthropists  who  have 
intimately  known  Confucianism  in  high  places  for  forty 
years,  it  is  believed  that  there  is  no  necessary  conflict  be- 
tween Christ  as  a  religious  teacher  and  Confucius  as  a  phil- 
osopher, any  more  than  between  Paul  and  Plato.  Believ- 
ing, as  they  do,  that  the  character  of  the  literary  class  will 
eventually  be  greatly  changed  through  the  introduction  of 
Western  science  into  the  civic  examinations,  it  is  also 
believed  that  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  a  sound  Confu- 
cianist  from  accepting  Christ  as  the  Light  of  the  World, 
without  abandoning  the  most  essential  positive  tenets  of 
Confucius  as  a  special  teacher  for  the  Chinese  people.^ 


That  Brahmanism  is  a  present  day  survival  of  one  of  the 
earliest  systems  pertaining  to  a  primitive  people,  is  clear 
from  the  Hindu  idea  of  a  national  deity  and  national  reli- 
gion. If  their  thought  concerning  Brahm,  the  Arranger 
of  the  universe,  does  not  necessarily  limit  the  divine  power 
to  the  Hindus,  yet  nothing  was  ever  formulated  by  the 

^Consult  Cycle  of  Cathay,  pp.  197,  446. 

^For  the  points  made  in  this  paragraph,  consult  Cycle  of  Cathay,. 
pp.  326,  455.     Lore  of  Cathay,  pp.  247,  248. 

If  the  reader  will  review  the  points  of  Confucian  instruction 
in  Chapter  V,  supra,  pp.  181,  182,  he  can  better  judge  how  far,  as 
a  constructive  system  —  not  of  negations  and  omissions, —  the 
positive  tenets  need  modification  to  comport  with  the  teachings  of 
Jesus. 


A  NATIONAL  RELIGION,  369 

Brahnians  to  indicate  any  divine  relation  to  other  peoples. 
For  Hindustan,  Brahm  is  local ;  from  his  mouth  proceed  the 
Brahmans,  from  his  feet  the  Sudras.  The  Brahmans  have 
therefore  never  suggested  the  possible  expectation  of  a  world- 
wide extension  of  their  faith,  or  an  aspiration  for  it.  But 
they  have  always  made  the  claim  that  their  faith  is  good 
for  India;  and,  in  their  own  country,  they  have  sent  mis- 
sions to  the  hill  tribes,  and  to  the  native  princes  they  have 
appealed  upon  patriotic  grounds  to  stand  by  the  divine 
revelation  happily  made  known  to  those  who  abide  in  their 
favored  peninsula  between  the  mountains  and  the  seas. 
So  they  have  held  their  own  through  the  ages,  content  with 
such  natural  increase  as  might  come  through  growth  of 
population.  The  leaders  of  religious  thought  in  India, 
upon  becoming  acquainted  with  Christianity,  have  asso- 
ciated this  European  faith  with  war  and  aggression,  with 
intemperance,  and  with  the  lives  of  nominal  Christians  in 
India  who  are  strangers  to  the  imitation  of  Christ.  To  the 
great  masses  —  scores  upon  scores  and  other  scores  upon 
scores  of  millions, —  Christianity  is  still  but  a  mere  name 
which  suggests  the  presence  of  the  haughty  beef -eating 
conquerors  of  India,  whose  so-called  religion  in  no  way 
commends  itself  to  them.  And  while  the  native  rulers  of 
India  and  officers  of  the  Crown,  the  heads  of  great  com- 
mercial houses,  and  men  wise  in  the  learning  of  the  Orient, 
all  appreciate  what  Great  Britain  is  doing  for  the  material 
prosperity  of  their  land  and  the  amelioration  of  social  con- 
ditions, yet  as  to  religion  they  fall  back  upon  old  custom, 
and  with  much  show  of  reason  affirm  that,  Avhile  Christian- 
ity may  be  good  for  Europe  and  America,  Hinduism  is 
best  adapted  to  India.  And  as  to  the  Brahmans,  the  intel- 
lectual leaders  of  Hindustan,  if,  through  their  hereditary 
culture  during  thousands  of  years,  they  are  deficient  in  well- 
proportioned  mental  discipline,  it  is  little  discerned  by 
them  that  their  unbounded  mental  pride  admits  of  no  dis- 
trust of  their  ability  to  settle  finally  all  questions  of  phi- 
losophy and  of  faith.  The  slightest  sense  of  intellectual 
24 


370  INHERENT  DIFFICULTIES  OF  EXPANSION. 

perplexity,  or  slightest  sense  of  humility  in  view  of  the 
limitations  of  the  human  mind,  has  not  come  down  to  the 
Brahmans  from  the  heights  of  a  hundred  ancestral  genera- 
tions. So  far  is  this  caste,  as  a  whole,  from  a  hospitable 
attitude  towards  possible  new  truth. 

Amid  tidal  waves  of  a  swiftly  advancing  higher  civiliza- 
tion and  culture  that  have  caught  up  so  many  great  peoples 
in  our  modern  era,  Hinduism  is  anchored  fast  to  the  primi- 
tive concept  and  custom  of  caste,  to  a  sacred  literature 
radically  at  variance  with  modern  knowledge,  and  to  sys- 
tems of  philosophy  fatal  to  social  progress;  and  this,  it  is 
claimed,  is  good  enough  for  India. 

Were  the  leaders  of  Hindu  thought,  however,  disposed 
to  attempt  the  wide  propagation  of  their  faith,  they  would 
instantly  discover  certain  considerations  that  militate 
against  it.  To  some,  it  would  not  seem  possible  that  the 
Western  mind  can,  by  reasoning,  view  things  from  the  Ori- 
ental standpoint.  When  President  Barrows  of  Oberlin 
asked  a  Brahman  priest  in  the  temple  of  Parbati, — "How 
can  I  become  a  Hindu, ' '  the  reply  was  made, — ' '  It  is  impos- 
sible. To  become  a  Hindu,  one  must  be  born  a  Hindu.  "^ 
So  rigid  are  the  barriers  which  might  intervene,  if  Brah- 
manism  were  seriously  to  consider  the  extension  of  their 
faith  to  Christendom.  Then,  too,  they  would  question 
whether  their  ritualistic  religion,  their  representative  wor- 
ship through  the  use  of  idols,  the  institution  of  caste,  the 
inferior  position  of  womanhood,  and  their  pessimistic  views 
of  life  would  be  adapted  to  the  needs  of  the  Western  mind 
at  the  present  era.  Besides  this,  caste  restrictions  are  such 
that  it  is  practically  impossible  for  a  Brahman  so  to  mingle 
with  other  peoples  as  to  exercise  a  long  continued  personal 
persuasive   influence   over   them.-     The   lack   of   religious 

^Christian  Conquest  of  Asia,  by  John  Henry  Barrows,  p.  230. 

^Youth  are  dissuaded  from  visiting  England.  One  cannot  travel 
without  daily  risk  of  losing  caste.  When  once  lost,  the  cost  of 
securing  a  restoration  has  been,  within  a  century,  as  high  as 
twenty  thousand  pounds:  it  is  now  quoted  as  ranging  from  forty 
pounds  to  sixty. 


HINDU  WEAKNESS  THROUGH  SUB-DIVISION.  371 

unity  is  another  thing  that  would  be  an  obstacle  to  Brah- 
manieal  propagandism.  In  certain  districts,  every  village 
differs  in  its  deities  from  every  other.^  Then,  too,  among 
perhaps  a  thousand  castes  in  India,  the  Brahmans  them- 
selves are  divided  into  several  hundred  sub-castes,  perhaps 
a  majority  of  all  that  exist;  so  that  the  unity  of  action 
needful  for  a  successful  propagation  of  Brahmanism  in  for- 
eign parts  could  not  be  secured  even  if  desired.  So  weak 
is  Brahmanism  as  a  world-power. 

With  several  hundred  kinds  of  Brahmans  who  will  not 
eat  with  each  other,^  there  must  be  not  only  an  unprogres- 
sive  societ}^,  but  a  state  bordering  on  national  disintegra- 
tion. Happily  a  national  bond  of  unity  is  found  in  the 
even  administration  of  justice,  and  the  exercise  of  a  humane 
policy  by  the  British  government,  which  with  its  provisions 
for  education,  its  diffusion  of  medical  science,  its  sanitation 
of  cities,  its  irrigating  works  and  famine  relief, —  stands 
serenely  for  the  best  interests  of  the  entire  body  of  the 
people  without  distinction  of  caste;  being  as  little  moved 
by  the  endless  petty  divisions  of  the  Hindus  as  the  Hima- 
layas are  disturbed  by  varying  wind  currents. 

Brahmanism  under  British  rule  has  multiplied,  by  the 
excess  of  births  over  deaths,  more  rapidly  by  one-tenth  than 
Christian  converts  have  been  made  through  philanthropic 
missions;  so  that  Modern  Hinduism  is  to-day  two  hundred 
millions  strong.  It  is  not,  however,  timely  to  insist  upon 
this  fact  during  the  identical  period  in  which  Christianity 
is  putting  in  its  Hindu  plant, —  since  by  parity  of  reason- 
ing, it  might  as  well  be  said  that  the  idol  worshippers  of 
the  Roman  Empire  were  multiplying  during  the  thirty 
years  of  the  Nazarene  life  of  Jesus.     At  the  beginning  of 

^Mitchell,  p.  192. 

-Sherring,  Hindu  Tribes  and  Castes,  London,  1872,  enumerates 
eighteen  hundred  and  eighty-six  tribes  of  Brahmans.  When  it  is 
considered  that  the  total  number  in  the  caste  is  probably  about 
fifteen  millions,  the  common  saying  in  India  is  credible  that 
there  are  seven  hundred  subdivisions,  each  claiming  a  peculiar 
sanctity. 


372  ADVANCE   OF   CHRISTIANITY 

any  new  movement  the  ratio  of  increase  is  very  great,  and 
the  natural  increase  of  an  opposing  movement  may  be  easily 
so  stated  as  to  be  misleading.  For  example,  during  the 
century,  1792-1892,  the  missionary  societies  of  Christen- 
dom increased  two  hundred  and  eighty-fold,  and  the  con- 
tributions for  their  support  35,153  fold.  It  cannot  be 
claimed  that  the  non-Christian  population  of  the  globe, 
within  the  same  century,  increased  in  so  great  a  ratio  as 
the  Christian  appliances  for  propagating  the  Gospel.  Or 
if  it  be  said  that  there  are  in  the  world  somewhat  less  per- 
haps than  seventeen  thousand  mission  stations  and  outsta- 
tions,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  a  few  years  ago  there 
were  none ;  that  Christianity  could  not  get  into  Japan,  Tur- 
key, nor  China,  and  that  India  was  not  long  since  totally 
Moslem  and  Hindu. 

In  an  address  before  a  committee  of  the  Society  for  the 
Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  a  few  years  since,  the  Rev. 
Roger  Dutt,  a  Bengali  clergyman  of  Cawnpore,  gave  four 
decadal  returns  of  native  Christians  in  India  :^  in  1851 
being  91,092;  in  1861  being  138,731;  in  1871  being  224,258; 
in  1881  being  417,372:  the  per  cent,  of  increase  being 
respectively^  fifty-five,  sixty-one,  and  eighty-six,  for  thirty 
years.  These  apparently  were  of  the  figures  published  by 
the  Calcutta  Missionary  Conference,  w^hich  also  detailed  the 
per  cent,  of  increase  in  the  various  provinces.  The  Indian 
census  for  1891  showed  an  increase  of  10.5  per  cent,  in  the 
population;  8.3  increase  of  Hinduism;  14  per  cent,  gain 
for  Islam ;  and  23.6  as  the  gain  in  native  Christians.  That 
Christianity  increases  more  rapidly  than  the  population, 
seems  to  be  supported  by  the  statistics  during  a  consider- 
able period  of  time.-  No  figures  can,  however,  justify 
prophecy :  and  it  is  pertinent  to  recall  the  conversion  of  the 

^This  refers  to  the  Protestant  enrollment.  The  current  States- 
man's Year  Book  includes  the  Roman  Catholic  population,  giving 
a  present  total  of  2,284,380  Christians  in  India. 

^Church  and  State  hi  India,  by  Sir  Theodore  C.  Hope.  London, 
1893.     Also  Dr.  George  Smith's  Conversion  of  India. 


IN  INDIA.  373 

Anglo-Saxons  which  was  merely  nominal  at  the  end  of  two 
centuries  after  the  attempt  was  first  made.  In  some  dis- 
tricts the  number  of  the  lower  caste  people  seeking  Chris- 
tian enrollment,  has  to  be  limited  by  the  insufficient  number 
of  missionaries  and  native  helpers  to  instruct  them.^  At 
the  Decennial  Conference  in  Bombay  in  1892-3,  it  was 
reported  of  the  Hindu  alumni  of  the  University  of  Madras 
that  one  in  twelve  was  a  Christian,  although  at  the  same 
hour  there  was  only  one  Christian  in  forty  of  the  entire 
population  of  the  Madras  Presidency.  "As  far  as  I  am 
able  to  gauge  the  attitude  of  the  cultured  and  refined  Hindu 
gentleman  towards  the  Christian  faith  and  its  professors, 
it  is  one  of  profound  respect;  he  is  anxious  to  be  taught 
and  enlightened":  this  is  the  statement  of  the  situation 
made  by  Judge  Vavada  Rao  Avergal  of  I\Iadura,  one  of  the 
highest  Hindu  officials  in  Southern  India,  in  an  address 
before  a  large  assembly,  upon  the  occasion  of  the  recent 
visit  of  the  Deputation  of  the  Aemrican  Board ;-  the  atti- 
tude of  the  Brahmans  was  not,  however,  presented. 

Hindu  society  is  so  permeated  with  the  idea  of  classify- 
ing the  population  by  caste,  it  is  now  said  that  a  new  caste 
has  arisen,  the  Christian.  In  any  event,  a  few  years  ago, 
the  Hindu  who  became  a  Christian  was  treated  as  an  out- 
cast. He  has  won  for  himself  a  standing;  native  Chris- 
tians having  now  a  recognized  social  status.  "They  are 
not  straw  and  paper  converts, ' '  says  Sir  William  IMuir,  for- 
merly Lieutenant-Governor  of  the  Northwestern  Provinces, 
"but  good  and  honest  Christians,  many  of  them  of  high 
standard."^  "The  native  Christians,"  says  Sir  Richard 
Temple,  "now  occupy  whole  tracts  and  districts  of  coun- 

'Bishop  J.  M.  Thoburn. 

"^Missionary  Herald,  June,  1902.     Boston. 

'In  referring  to  the  great  changes  since  he  went  to  Hindustan 
more  than  sixty  years  ago,  Vice-Chancellor  Muir  of  Edinburgh 
University,  formerly  Lieutenant-Governor  in  India,  has  written 
to  the  Author: — "One  cannot  help  observing  the  distinctly  ame- 
liorating influences  of  Christian  work  on  society  at  large;  and 
especially  on  the  classes,  which,  in  the  large  cities,  have  come 
Immediately  within  the  atmosphere  of  missionary  schools.     The 


374  ADVANCE   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

try;  they  behave  as  well,  on  the  average,  as  Christians  in 
any  land;  if  you  appeal  to  the  magistrates  in  India,  they 
will  give  the  native  Christians  everywhere  a  good  charac- 
ter."^ The  substantial  sociological  value  of  this  work 
appears  in  a  communication  from  the  Right  Rev.  Frederick 
Cell,  D.  D.,  late  Bishop  of  Madras- : — ' '  Those  who  become 
Christians  show  a  greater  desire  for  education,  and  to  rise 
in  the  social  scale ;  they  are  more  cleanly  in  their  habits  and 
better  dressed ;  they  improve  their  dwelling  houses ;  a  spirit 
of  self-respect  is  increasing  among  them;  they  are  more 
moral,  and  purer  in  their  lives,  more  truthful  and  faithful, 
than  non-Christians  of  the  same  caste." 

**I  have  governed  a  hundred  and  five  millions  of  the 
inhabitants  of  India, ' '  it  was  remarked  by  the  late  Sir  Rich- 
ard Temple,  "and  been  concerned  with  eighty-five  millions 
more.  I  thus  had  acquaintance  with,  or  authentic  informa- 
tion regarding,  nearly  all  the  missionaries  laboring  in  India 
during  thirty  years.  A  more  talented,  zealous,  and  able 
body  of  men  does  not  exist  in  India."  The  course  taken 
by  these  European  and  American  philanthropists  in  the 
Christian  drill  of  native  converts  inspires  confidence  in  the 
stability  of  their  work.^     The  result  of  this  is  a  new  India 

work  of  lady  missionaries  in  Zenanas  has  made  an  entire  trans- 
formation, so  far  as  it  has  extended,  in  spreading  It^nowledge,  and 
raising  the  status  of  women.  No  one  who  knew  India  fifty  or 
sixty  years  ago,  but  must  have  observed  this." 

^Address,  New  York,  1882. 

^Personal  letter  to  the  Author,  enclosing  the  report  of  the  Rev. 
James  Stone,  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society. 

'Take,  for  example,  the  America  Madura  Mission: — Here  are 
twenty-four  churches:  they  are  not  one  whit  behind  England  and 
America  in  respect  to  the  avoidance  of  idolatrous  and  caste 
usages,  and  of  intemperance;  in  the  exercise  of  care  in  church 
discipline,  in  the  formation  of  habits  of  secret  prayer  and  of 
family  devotions,  in  attendance  upon  church  prayer-meetings,  in 
women's  weekly  prayer-meetings,  in  the  observance  of  the  Sab- 
bath, in  the  training  of  children  in  Christian  schools, —  great 
pains  have  been  taken  during  more  than  half  a  century,  not  only 
in  minute  attention  to  forming  right  spiritual  habits  but  in  the 
cultivation  of  intellectual  gifts. 


IN  INDIA.  375 

SO  far  as  concerns  the  native  Christian  families.  In  the 
new  Christian  home,  both  the  wife  and  husband  have 
attended  school,  and,  socially,  they  are  competent  to  win, — 
when  compared  with  the  non-Christian  home  with  its  child 
marriage,  its  degraded  womanhood,  its  polygamy,  and  its 
nameless  abominations.  The  Moslem  and  the  Hindu  cannot 
keep  pace  with  the  advancement  of  the  Christian.  In 
sheer  ability,  the  Christian  man  of  the  second,  or,  now,  of 
the  third  generation,  is  more  than  a  match  for  his  idola- 
trous Hindu  neighbor  in  the  village.  This  is  so  notable 
that  the  official  reports  of  the  Indian  government  allude 
to  it.  The  most  loyal  subjects  are  the  native  Christians, 
and  they  are  the  most  intelligent.  As  to  influence  and  posi- 
tion and  wealth,  they  are  gaining;  this  means  very  much 
for  the  next  generations.  Once  the  high  castes  furnished 
most  of  the  government  officers,  but  native  Christians 
equally  well  educated  have  proved  to  be  so  efficient  in  pub- 
lic service  that  the  Brahmans  have  relatively  lost  ground.* 
The  Christian  natives  are  found  particularly  well  fitted  to 
serve  the  state  in  routine  administration,  and  in  school  work 
for  civilizing  rude  tribes,  like  those  among  the  Garo  hills. 
All  this  points  to  the  fact  that  Christianity  has  taken  such 
firm  hold  upon  India  that  it  will  stay  there,  and  grow. 
That  it  will  grow  through  native  power  is  attested  by  the 
Indian  Witness  of  March  31,  1894,  which  contains  the 
statement  of  an  American  missionary,  who,  through  sick- 
ness, was  absent  from  his  field  for  six  years.  When  he  left 
the  Bijnor  district,  only  a  hundred  villages  had  been 
reached;  on  his  return  fifteen  hundred  and  fifty  new  vil- 
lages had  been  occupied  through  native  agencies. 

So  great  are  the  calls  for  philanthropic  service  in  all 
parts  of  her  world-empire,  that  Great  Britain  has  wel- 
comed to  the  Indian  field  spiritual  workers  from  all  parts 
of  Christendom.  There  are  now  sixty-nine  missionary 
societies  operating  in  India  as  one  field  of  labor,  at  an 
annual  expense  of  some  sixty  thousand  pounds. 

Wide  the  statements  made  by  George  Smith,  LL.  D.,  in  his 
Conversion  of  India. 


376  CHRISTIANITY    IN    INDIA, 

It  will  be  seen  by  this  that  as  a  point  of  sociological 
strategy,  the  Western  philanthropists  have  executed  a  flank 
movement  upon  the  Brahmans,  similar  to  that  put  into 
effect  by  General  Grant  in  his  final  advance  on  Richmond. 
Constantly  confronted  by  General  Lee,  Grant  moved  con- 
stantly on  Lee's  flank  pressing  on  toward  Richmond.  Mis- 
sionaries in  India  are  constantly  instructed  to  avoid  con- 
troversy; the  Brahmans  are  ignored,  the  advancing  Chris- 
tian hosts  steadily  push  by  them,  toward  the  end  sought  — 
the  elevation  of  the  lower  castes. 

Lecky,  in  his  "History  of  European  Morals"^  draws 
attention  to  the  failure  of  the  great  Roman  philosophers 
and  historians  to  discern  in  the  rise  of  Christianity  any- 
thing that  Avould  change  the  face  of  the  world.  And  it  well 
may  be  that  the  Brahmans,  the  Buddhists,  the  Confucian- 
ists,  the  Moslems,  do  not  discern  ^ny  cosmic  changing  power 
in  the  advance  of  Christianity  all  along  the  lines  where 
rival  religions  come  in  contact,  yet  not  more  surely  did 
Christianity  change  the  face  of  Rome  than  it  is  now  chang- 
ing India.  "More  progress  has  been  made  in  a  hundred 
years  toward  the  conversion  of  India,"  says  Dean  Farrar, 
"than  was  made  in  the  conversion  of  the  Roman  Empire 
during  the  first  Christian  century."  Is  it  not  possible  to 
foresee  the  time  when  Brahmanism  will  have  as  completely 
passed  away  as  the  faiths  of  Rome,  of  Greece,  of  Assyria, 
and  Egypt? 

"The  spirit  of  Christianity  has  already  pervaded  the 
whole  atmosphere  of  Indian  society,"  said  Chunder  Sen; 
"and  we  breathe,  think,  feel,  and  move  in  a  Christian 
atmosphere.  Native  society  is  being  roused,  enlightened, 
and  reformed  under  the  influence  of  Christian  education." 

"  It  is  Christ  who  rules  British  India,  and  not  the  British 
Government,"   said   the   same   reformer.-     "England   has 

'Vol.  I,  p.  359. 

=In  his  Address  before  a  thousand  people  in  the  town  hall,  Cal- 
cutta, April  9,  1879.  Keshab  Chunder  Sen,  1838-1884,  denied  the 
deity  of  Christ,  but  received  him  as  the  greatest  of  all  Asiatic 
saints. 


IDEA  OF  GOD 'S  KINGDOM  INFLUENCED  BY  IMPERIALISM,  377 

sent  out  a  tremendous  moral  force  in  the  life  and  character 
of  that  mighty  prophet  to  conquer  and  hold  this  vast 
empire.  None  but  Jesus,  none  but  Jesus,  none  but  Jesus, 
ever  deserved  this  bright,  this  i)recious  diadem,  India,  and 
Jesus  shall  have  it." 

VI. 

At  the  Chicago  council  of  all  the  world  in  religious  con- 
ference, or  Parliament  of  Religions,  Christianity  was  the 
only  one  that  made,  then  and  there,  any  open  claim  of  being 
adapted  to  universal  sway.  ' '  In  thy  seed  shall  all  the  fam- 
ilies of  the  earth  be  blessed"  was  the  ideal  set  before  Abra- 
ham. "Go  ye  into  all  the  world,  lo,  I  am  with  you,"  was 
the  mandate  of  our  Lord.  During  seventy  generations 
there  has  been  the  clear  cut  conception  of  a  universal  divine 
kingdom  upon  the  earth.  From  the  outset  Christianity  — 
based  upon  the  love  of  God,  love  to  God,  and  love  to  all 
men, —  has  deliberately  planned  to  take  moral  possession 
of  the  world.  The  earliest  propagation  of  Christianity  was 
through  men  to  whom  the  idea  of  the  reign  of  the  unseen 
God  upon  the  earth  came  with  the  weight  of  divine  author- 
ity manifest  during  some  centuries  of  the  preceding  Hebrew 
history.  The  Gentile  Church  Fathers  dealt  with  Chris- 
tianity as  a  graft  upon  the  old  stock,  having  its  vitality  in 
the  ancient  divine  dispensation.^  Yet  the  mighty  outwork- 
ing of  their  idea  and  its  surpassing  hold  upon  men  could 
never  have  been  carried  so  far  as  it  was,  had  it  not  been 
handled  by  the  Roman  Church,  which  inherited  certain 
imperial  ideas  from  the  empire ;  an  imperial  habit  of  mind 
fitted  the  Roman  Church  for  making  wide  conquests;  and 
the  Roman  ecclesiastics  inherited  a  genius  for  organization 
and  governing  through  well  defined  statutes.     The  spiritual 

Wide  The  Homilies  of  Augustine,  Chrysostom,  and  others, 
passim. 

The  idea  of  a  divine  Itingdom  on  earth,  rooted  in  Judaism, 
received  a  great  impulse  through  Christianity. —  Consult  Toy's 
"Judaism  and  Christianity,"  pp.  303-8,  368, 


378  A    WORLD-WIDE    DIVINE    KINGDOM. 

ideas  which  they  received  as  having  come  down  from  imme- 
morial ages,  from  Abraham  the  Hebrew,  Moses  the  law- 
giver, David  the  poet,  Isaiah  the  seer,  and  from  the  divine 
self-revelation  in  Jesus  Christ,  were  taken  up  by  men  fitted 
to  propagate  them  through  mental  characteristics  formed 
by  the  Caesars.  Looking  at  it  from  a  secular  point  of 
view,  as  a  sociological  phenomenon,  the  system  and  orderli- 
ness and  magnificent  power  to  reach  and  to  direct  and 
control  divers  peoples,  which  characterized  the  Western 
Church,  was  a  prime  factor  in  the  moral  development  of 
the  modern  age.  When,  therefore,  we  speak  of  the  present 
day  Christendom  as  a  moral  evolution,  we  have  to  do  with 
a  force  that  has,  in  some  of  its  elements,  come  down  through 
a  hundred  generations  of  well  defined  religious  sentiment^ 
and  three  score  generations  of  special  genius  for  self-exten- 
sion and  organization  and  government  adapted  to  moral 
and  religious  relations. 

The  development  of  religious  thought  in  Israel  was  but 
the  conception  and  growth  of  their  thought  of  God  as  the 
Moral  Governor  of  men;  it  was  closely  connected  with  the 
evolution  of  the  prophetic  and  priestly  orders,  through 
which  the  Jewish  literature  has  come  down  to  us.  When 
the  early  idolatry  and  kingcraft  of  the  Hebrews  perished, 
the  literary  craft  came  into  power;  and  when  the  most 
worldly  minded  Jews  voluntarily  remained  in  the  lands  of 
exile,  the  chosen  few  who  nourished  in  their  hearts  the  hope 
of  Israel  came  to  the  fore,  reviving  whatever  of  moral  senti- 
ment and  civic  custom  had  been  of  supreme  value  among 
their  people  during  a  score  of  generations,  and  giving  to 
the  priestly  order  that  preeminence  which  they  never  lost 
till  the  time  of  Titus, —  henceforth  making  the  moralities 
and  questions  of  casuistry  matters  of  the  highest  moment 
in  Judea.  During  this  lapse  of  time,  which  was  longer 
than  that  of  the  English  ages  since  Chaucer,  the  Old  Testa- 
ment literature  w^as  put  into  the  shape  in  which  we  now 
have  it.  When  we  consider  the  changes  in  the  intellectual 
and  moral  development  of  Europe  that  have  taken  place 


THE  FORMATION  OF   CHRISTENDOM.  37& 

since  a  few  generations  before  Luther,  it  is  credible  that^ 
within  a  period  so  long,  great  moral  discoveries  and  new 
revelations  of  the  things  of  God  were  made  by  the  devout 
thinkers  of  Israel.  And  so  great  was  the  impetus  they 
gave  to  new  truth,  so  great  their  enthusiasm  in  bringing 
Him  who  is  invisible  to  the  knowledge  of  men,  so  absorbed 
were  they  in  the  thought  of  advancing  the  Kingdom  of  God, 
that  their  proselyting  attracted  the  attention  of  the  Roman 
empire,  and  two  royal  edicts^  were  issued  to  prevent  the 
accession  to  Judaism  of  any  not  born  to  the  faith. 

From  this  time  forth  the  doctrine  of  a  Living  Spirit 
within  the  wheels  of  human  history,  energizing  and  guiding 
both  individual  life  and  racial  movements  to  higher  and 
higher  ideals,  has  been  one  of  the  chief  factors  in  the  moral 
progress  of  humanity.  The  thought  of  Jesus,  and  of  his 
followers  from  that  day  to  this,  has  indeed  come  down  to  us 
handicapped  by  human  infirmities,  accompanied  by  a  rude 
force  of  unholy  ambitions,  most  irreligious  activities  and 
moral  inconsistences,  but  it  has  eventuated  in  forming  the 
Christendom  of  to-day, —  a  compacted  body  of  peoples, 
holding  theories  of  great  similarity  in  respect  to  interna- 
tional law,  civic  forms  and  freedom,  domestic  customs,  a 
community  of  interest  in  educational  standards  and  scien- 
tific attainments,  and  in  a  religious  faith  derived  from  the 
same  Sacred  Books,  and  actuated,  moreover,  in  some  meas- 
ure by  altruistic  ideals  on  the  part  of  a  vast  number  of 
individuals,  even  when  corporate,  commercial  and  civic  con- 
duct have  been  little  affected  by  the  Golden  Rule  or  a  sense 
of  amenability  to  a  divine  law  above  all  human  legislation. 

Throughout  the  dark  and  dreary  ages  of  European  his- 
tory, to  Christianity  alone  was  due  the  doctrine  of  a  moral 
law  rising  above  all  physical  force,  a  law  that  little  by  little 
has  proved  to  be  a  constructive  power  in  society,  slowly 
and  by  silent  advancement  bringing  the  kingdoms  of  men 
under   its   resistless   control.     The   spiritual   condition    of 

'Of  Hadrian  and  of  Antonius  Pius. —  Harnack's  Expansion  of 
Christianity,  p.  11.     New  York,  1904. 


380 


THE  SPIRITUAL  KINGDOM. 


individual  men,  the  kingdom  of  God  within,  has  been  in 
this  way  so  brought  into  accord  with  the  Law-ordaining 
Power  in  matter  and  in  mind,  that  the  love  of  God,  love  to 
God,  and  love  to  men  have  found  a  permanent  place  among 
the  motives  paramount  in  the  minds  of  vast  numbers 
throughout  Christendom,  who  little  by  little  cooperate  for 
modifying  civic,  commercial  and  corporate  conduct  in  the 
interest  of  that  universal  Kingdom  of  Love,  which  seeks 
to  unify  the  race  as  brethren,  the  children  of  God.  To 
this  —  it  is  held  —  all  human  industry  is  tributary,  to  this 
all  human  science,  to  this  all  use  of  civic  liberty, —  to  elevate 
men  to  a  worthy  citizenship  in  the  City  of  God  in  the 
world's  coming  Golden  Age. 

To  carry  out  this  plan  for  a  universal  Spiritual  King- 
dom, there  are  now  enlisted,  throughout  Christendom,  large 
numbers  of  business  men  in  comprehensive,  well  organized 
•altruistic  enterprises  to  advance  the  ideas  underlying  the 
Kingdom  of  Love,  among  great  peoples  that  comprise  more 
than  half  the  human  race,  of  whom  hundreds  of  millions 
have  been  enrolled  in  the  votive  service  of  non-Christian 
faiths  during  thousands  of  years.  Christianity  has  been 
always  attempting,  century  by  century,  to  evangelize  the 
world,  after  such  fashion  as  the  intellectual  and  spiritual 
enlightenment,  and  the  local  environment  of  the  Church  in 
any  given  century  might  allow.  To  speak  otherwise,  beto- 
kens lack  of  information  in  regard  to  the  historical  condi- 
tion of  the  Church  and  of  the  world,  and  the  hindrances  in 
former  ages.  The  present  activities  could  not  have  been 
carried  on  in  Japan  and  China  two  generations  ago  when 
those  nations  were  closed  to  foreigners;  nor  in  certain 
-African  fields  prior  to  their  discovery ;  nor  in  India,  nor  in 
Moslem  realms,  when  they  were  inaccessible.  The  Euro- 
pean problems  that  called  for  Christian  solving  were  urgent 
in  the  earlier  ages.  Looking  at  it  as  a  home  mission  field, 
Christianity  was  well  occupied  in  Europe  prior  to  this  cen- 
tury. If  the  present  age  may  be  called  preeminently  a 
"missionary  era,  it  is  because  providential  events  favor  it. 


THE  MACHINERY  FOR  SELF-EXPANSION.  381 

Continental  Europe  maintains  twelve  hundred  Protes- 
tant missionaries  at  five  hundred  and  fifty  stations,  at  a 
cost  of  fifteen  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year.  Great 
Britain,  Canada,  and  Australia  have  more  than  a  hundred 
and  twenty  missionary  societies ;  the  annual  income  of  the 
Church  Missionary  Society  being  nearly  three  hundred 
thousand  pounds.  Cardinal  Manning  once  said  that  the 
English  people  had  their  choice,  whether  to  be  the  beasts 
of  burden  or  the  evangelists  of  the  world.  They  chose  to 
become  the  evangelists.  Seven  million  dollars  a  year  are 
contributed  by  the  United  States  for  distinctive  foreign 
missionary  service.  There  are  fifty-one  principal  societies 
engaged  in  the  work;  and  eighty-two  auxiliary  societies 
independent  and  working  in  special  departments  or  indi- 
rectly aiding. 

The  total  Protestant  Foreign  Missionary  Societies  in 
Christendom  number  five  thousand  and  fifty-eight,  with  an 
annual  income  of  $19,598,823.^  There  are  18,164  mission- 
aries; of  whom  6,027  are  ordained  as  clergymen.  Of  ele- 
mentary or  village  schools  there  are  maintained  18,742; 
with  904,442  pupils.  There  are  1,632  academic,  medical, 
and  industrial  schools,  with  141,867  pupils.  Of  universi- 
ties and  colleges  there  are  ninety-three,  with  35,414  stu- 
dents. There  have  been  gathered  13,039  children  into  213 
orphanages,  foundling  asylums,  and  homes  for  infants. 
There  are  711  missionary  physicians,  ministering  in  355  hos- 

'The  figures  in  this  paragraph  relate  to  the  end  of  the  century, 
and  are  found  in  J.  S.  Dennis'  Centennial  Survey  of  Foreign  Mis- 
sions, New  York,  1902;  a  work  invaluable  to  the  sociologist. 

It  has  proved  impracticable  for  the  author  to  obtain  a  suffi- 
cient body  of  such  statistics  as  he  has  desired,  in  regard  to  the 
great  work  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  throughout  the  world; 
and  an  imperfect  presentation  would  be  misleading.  In  stating, 
however,  that  the  annual  collections  for  the  Society  for  the  Pro- 
pagation of  the  Faith  average  not  far  from  one  million  and  a 
third  dollars,  he  can  but  take  a  pardonable  pride  in  the  fact  that 
the  Boston  Diocese  is  the  largest  contributor.  The  total  collec- 
tions in  eighty-four  years  have  been  seventy  millions  of  dollars. 


382 


THE  MAGNITUDE  OF  THE  WORK. 


pitals  and  753  dispensaries  to  93,705  in-patients,  2,579,651 
out-patients,  giving  6,647,840  annual  treatments. 

Of  Women's  Foreign  Missionary  Societies  in  Christen- 
dom there  are  a  hundred  and  twenty,  of  which  eighty-eight 
are  auxiliary.  These  societies  are  ministered  to  through 
local  auxiliaries  in  churches  and  parishes,  there  being  not 
fewer  than  thirty  thousand  of  these  minor  auxiliaries  in  the 
United  States.  There  are  7,285  women  missionaries  in  the 
field.  As  wives,  mothers,  teachers,  physicians,  they  aid 
the  women  of  India,  China,  Turkey,  Africa,  and  the  Pacific 
Islands,  in  the  evolution  of  a  higher  type  of  domestic  life. 

As  a  sociological  experiment  these  figures  are  of  great 
interest :  a  free  gift  from  the  business  men  of  Christendom 
of  more  than  twenty  million  dollars  a  year;  maintaining 
more  than  eighteen  thousand  philanthropic  specialists  — 
seven  thousand  of  them  well  educated  women, —  in  altru- 
istic service  in  foreign  fields;  giving  annual  schooling  to 
more  than  a  million  pupils;  and  giving  medical  assistance 
to  two  and  two-thirds  millions  of  patients  upon  six  and  a 
half  millions  of  occasions  in  each  year : —  this  is  the  volun- 
tary offering  of  Christianity  year  by  year  to  aid  in  the 
moral  evolution  of  the  non-Christian  races,  by  extending 
practical  help  in  the  hour  of  need  to  the  poorest  of  the  poor 
and  to  those  stricken  with  disease,  and  introducing  to  all 
minds  the  idea  of  Our  Heavenly  Father 's  love  to  his  earthly 
children  and  our  returning  love,  and  making  known  God's 
peace  and  good  will  to  all  men  of  good  will  —  so  gladly 
laying  the  foundations  of  the  Kingdom  of  Love  among  all 
peoples, —  in  a  life  of  unthanked  self-denial  for  the  good 
of  others.  As  the  divine  love,  the  divine  redemption,  was 
for  man,  for  man  is  the  divine  instrumentality  of  the  King- 
dom of  Love,  wide  as  the  intent  of  heaven  and  wide  as  the 
needs  of  humanity. 

It  is  too  early  to  look  for  results.  Yet  a  vital  seed  has 
been  planted  by  Christianity  in  non-Christian  realms  all 
over  the  world : — 

The  work  is  carried  on  at  31,818  stations,  each  principal 


ITS  STATISTICAL  RESULTS.  383 

station  having  usually  five  sub-stations.^  The  Christian 
native  contributions  for  advancing  the  work  amount  to 
$1,841,757 : 

Of  the  beginnings  of  churches  (14,221)  there  are  more 
than  four  times  as  many  as  there  were  in  all  the  United 
States  in  1800;  there  are  more  in  number  than  in  the  ten 
€cclesiastical  bodies  which  comprised  all  branches  of  the 
Presbyterian  Church  in  the  United  States  in  1885 : 

The  total  number  added  to  these  native  churches,  in  the 
last  year  of  the  report,  was  greater  than  the  population 
of  Geneva  and  Berne,  greater  than  Hartford  and  New 
Haven,  and  nearly  one-third  as  many  as  the  total  increase 
of  Protestant  communicants  in  the  United  States  in  1894: 

The  total  number  of  native  communicants  (1,531,889) 
exceed  the  enrollment  of  the  entire  ten  branches  of  the  Pres- 
byterian body  in  the  United  States  in  1885,  together  with 
the  Free  Church  of  Scotland  in  1878 ;  there  are  four  times 
as  many  native  Christian  church  members  as  there  were  in 
the  churches  of  the  United  States  in  1800,  and  one-tenth  as 
many  as  there  were  in  1894: 

Of  these  native  churches  one  member  in  twenty  gives  his 
entire  time  to  altruistic  service;  the  number  so  employed 
being  more  than  one-half  as  large  as  that  of  the  population 
of  the  state  of  Delaware: 

The  native  Christian  community  or  number  of  adherents 
in  Christian  families  (4,514,592)  is  very  nearly  equal  to 
that  of  the  combined  population  of  Pekin,  Tokio,  Constan- 
tinople, St.  Petersburg,  and  Berlin : —  yet  of  this  native 
community  one-third  are  church  members,  which  is  as  great 
a  proportion  as  that  in  the  early  settlement  of  New  Eng- 
land by  the  Puritans ;  the  Christian  total  native  community, 
as  it  now  exists  in  non-Christian  lands,  is  larger  than  the 
population  of  Holland  or  of  Turkey  in  Europe,  being  nearly 
the  same  as  the  population  of  Sweden ;  this  Christian  native 
community  is  85  per  cent,  of  the  population  of  the  United 
States  in  1800,  yet  with  this  smaller  gross  population  the 

^Dennis. 


384  THE    SELF-EXTENSION    OP    CHRISTIANITY. 

native  church  members  are  four  times  as  many  as  there 
were  in  the  United  States  at  that  time ;  the  native  Christian 
adherents  are  already  about  one-tenth  of  the  Christian, 
adherents  in  the  United  States  in  1890;  this  native  com- 
munity now  gathered  in  the  non-Christian  lands  is  within, 
two  hundred  thousand  as  many  as  that  of  the  census  enroll- 
ment of  the  New  England  states  —  Maine,  New  Hampshire, 
Vermont,  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  and  Connecticut, — 
in  1890,  yet  the  Protestant  Church  members  of  New  Eng- 
land would  have  to  be  multiplied  by  2.3  to  equal  the  mem- 
bership in  the  native  Christian  community  of  nearly  the 
same  total  population : 

If  these  total  results  —  of  a  trifle  miore  than  a  hundred 
years  of  modern  Christian  missions, —  are  small,  yet  they 
are  of  great  importance  in  their  relation  to  the  coming  cen- 
turies ;  and  in  the  historic  light  of  the  results  of  the  earlier 
missionary  activities  of  the  Church,  they  presage  a  great 
social  and  moral  change  in  elevating  depressed  peoples. 

Christianity  is  a  religion  of  ideas  that  rise  to  such  moral 
grandeur  as  never  entered  into  the  heart  of  man  to  con- 
ceive ;  its  votaries  believe  that  they  have  been  suggested  by 
the  All-Father  for  guiding  his  children.  They  are  so  held 
as  to  limit  the  authority  of  despots  and  contribute  to  the 
greatest  degree  of  civil  freedom;  so  held  as  to  encircle  the 
sanctity  of  home-life  by  law,  protecting  childhood,  and. 
elevating  womanhood.  Under  their  reign  have  been  devel- 
oped the  material  resources  of  the  earth  to  a  degree 
unknown  to  non-Christian  races,  through  a  knowledge  of 
natural  science  that  has  not  been  attained  by  rival  peoples. 
The  best  educational  methods,  the  most  general  intelligence,, 
the  best  systematized  altruistic  humanitarian  work,  and  the 
most  thoroughly  organized  and  aggressive  religious  power 
upon  the  planet,  have  characterized  the  races  of  Christen- 
dom. If,  therefore,  we  say  of  the  lower  races  of  animals 
that  a  certain  sagacity  favors  the  preservation  of  some,  that 
keen  vision  or  sharp  hearing  favors  others,  that  fleetness 
of  foot  or  muscular  strength  and  adroitness  tends  to  secure 
to  others  victory  in  the  struggle  for  life,  how  then  can 


EXTENT  OP  THE  CHRISTIAN  REALM.  385 

inferior  religions  but  perish,  and  races  that  cannot  make 
good  their  places  at  the  front  fall  still  further  into  the 
rear  ?  Is  there  not  a  constant  process  of  religious  and  social 
selection  going  forward  generation  after  generation,  in 
which  some  are  all  the  time  failing  and  being  supplanted 
by  those  better  fitted  to  survive.  In  yesterday  we  read 
to-day;  in  to-day  we  read  tomorrow.  The  extermination 
of  the  unfit  is  an  everyday  affair  in  nature;  how  then  can 
the  highest  hopes  for  the  future  of  mankind  depend  upon 
the  least  helpful  and  the  most  stagnant  of  the  religions,  and 
those  races  most  lacking  in  energy  and  practical  power  to 
get  on  in  the  world  ?^  Would  it  not  be  easy  to  show  by  dry 
statistics  —  blossoming  in  beauty  like  the  miraculous  rod 
of  Hebrew  story  —  that  Christianity  has  won  the  nations 
of  the  future?  Have  not  the  great  Protestant  powers  of 
Christendom,  at  the  present  moment,  political  control  of  a 
third  part  of  the  human  race!  Add  to  these  the  peoples 
under  the  control  of  the  Greek  Church  and  the  Roman 
Church,  and  Christianity  now  dominates  races  that  number 
three-fifths  of  the  population  of  the  world.  Christianity, 
too,  in  its  own  right,  is  numerically  the  foremost  religion 
upon  the  globe.  By  a  phenomenal  expansion  within  two 
hundred  years,  Christendom  now  has  a  population  of  nearly 
five  hundred  millions.  The  advance,  too,  in  the  vitality  of 
Christianity  —  the  number  of  communicants  —  in  Christen- 
dom itself,  appears  from  the  fact  that  in  the  United  States, 
within  the  nineteenth  century,  the  communicants  increased 
fifty  fold,  Avhile  the  total  population  of  the  country 
increased  fourteen  fold.- 

'Do  we  say,  that,  in  the  early  stages  of  religiou^  thought,  among- 
barbaric  or  semi-barbaric  peoples  who  have  but  a  perverted  moral 
sense,  a  race  may  be  greatly  advantaged  by  a  religious  system, 
essentially  incorrect  in  its  radical  notions,  if  it  has  truth  enough 
in  it  to  check  the  evil  tendencies  of  some  and  nourish  the  piety 
of  others?  In  so  saying  we  appreciate  warmly  all  the  good 
wrought  by  it,  yet  nothing  hinders  our  recognition  of  the  tem- 
porary character  of  its  services  to  humanity. 

=The  onpushing  aggressive  power  of  the  American  churches  in 
their  own  home  field  is  shown  by  their  expenditure  of  a  hundred 
25 


386  THE  SPIRIT  OF  SELF-SACRIFICE. 

Yet  such  numbers  are  not  of  present  importance  or  to  be 
insisted  upon.  Of  most  importance  is  the  self-sacrificing 
spirit  of  Christianity  in  its  effort  to  extend  the  reign  of  the 
law  of  love  throughout  the  earth.^  As  between  man  and 
man,  what  we  call  moral  conduct  is  comprised  for  the  most 
part  in  duties  that  relate  to  others.  Concerning  this,  it 
was  a  fundamental  idea  at  the  Christian  era  that  the  lower 
life  should  be  sacrificed  to  the  higher,  the  lower  good  for 
the  higher,  and  self  —  in  an  overflowing  measure  of  love  — 
for  the  well-being  of  others.  "Whosoever  would  become 
great  among  you  shall  be  your  minister ' ' :  your  minister  in 
a  ministration  that  is  the  very  opposite  of  a  cold,  calculat- 
ing prudence,  planning  to  obtain  every  time  quid  pro  quo, — 
a  ministration  that  does  not  limit  self-sacrifice  to  what  is 
just  enough  to  get  on  with,  a  ministration  that  never  thinks 
what  society  can  do  for  a  man  but  what  he  can  do  for 
society  —  imparting  his  own  life  for  the  lives  of  others, — 
it  is  not  mere  devotion  to  an  unselfish  plan  of  life  but  readi- 
ness for  heroic  moral  venture  since  it  can  never  be  known 
beforehand  whether  the  venture  will  accomplish  all  that  is 
hoped  for.^  If  this  be  not  so,  it  is  like  it.  And  in  setting 
forth  this  ideal  Jesus  Christ  provided  the  means  of  social 
advancement  in  the  administration  of  the  Kingdom  of  Love. 

•millions  dollars  a  year  to  maintain  religious  services  and  work, 
and  their  investment  within  the  nineteenth  century  of  $365,- 
000,000,  in  home  evangelization.  Providentially  this  work  has, 
within  a  hundred  years,  increased  the  Protestant  communicants 
from  a  ratio  of  one  in  thirteen  of  the  total  population  to  one  in 
four. 

^"The  history  of  self-sacrifice  during  the  last  eighteen  hundred 
years,  has  been  mainly  the  history  of  the  action  of  Christianity 
upon  the  world."  "It  is  always  extremely  important  to  trace  the 
direction  in  which  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  is  moving;  for  upon 
the  intensity  of  that  spirit  depends  the  moral  elevation  of  an  age, 
and  upon  its  course  the  religious  future  of  the  world." — Lecky's 
History  of  Rationalism. 

-The  capacity  for  sacrifice  with  intelligence  and  cheerfulness, 
to  useful  ends,  is  the  great  social  and  public  requirement  of  our 
times. —  Charles  B.  Rice. 


THE   HEROIC   ELEMENT   IN   MODERN   LIFE.  387 

Is  not  this  the  living  moral  principle  which  is  most  effica- 
cious in  promoting  the  social  evolution  of  all  the  races? 
The  heroic  age  is  not  behind  us.  Is  it  not  the  chivalrous 
quest  of  human  wretchedness  to  be  alleviated,  which  gives 
matchless  distinction  to  the  present  hour?  What  inscrip- 
tion can  be  more  triumphant  than  that  on  General  Gordon 's 
monument  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral?  He,  indeed,  was  the 
man, —  "Who  at  all  times  and  everywhere  gave  his  strength 
to  the  weak,  his  substance  to  the  poor,  his  sympathy  to  the 
suffering,  and  his  heart  to  God."  What  other  truth  than 
that  of  Christ  crucified  has  ever  led  to  so  much  self-denial? 
Has  not  the  ideal  of  heroic  character  been  changed  by  Chris- 
tianity ?  Once  it  was  physical,  now  it  is  spiritual.  Would 
men  left  to  themselves  have  ever  invented  a  system  based 
upon  self-sacrifice  as  the  leading  principle  to  govern  a  man's 
life  ?  Are  not  duties  irksome,  dangers  extreme, —  the  rally- 
ing cries  of  the  Kingdom  of  God?  Men  and  women  leave 
all,  to  heed  the  call  of  humanity.  This  heroic  element  in 
modern  life,  this  self-sacrifice  for  others  as  an  ideal  of  life, 
will  some  day  gain  sway  among  all  peoples.  Is  not  this 
the  law  of  human  progress?  Is  it  not  this  which  coordi- 
nates all  Christian  experience,  which  unifies  the  Christian 
body,  which  mobilizes  all  forces,  which  enables  Christianity 
to  secure  the  cooperation  of  its  membership  upon  every  con- 
tinent and  in  every  isle  to  promote  that  for  which  the 
Church  exists, —  the  evangelization  of  the  world,  the  build- 
ing of  the  New  Jerusalem,  the  fraternity  of  man,  and  103^- 
alty  to  God?  So  it  has  come  about  that  self-sacrifice  for 
the  sake  of  others  has  become  the  leading  principle  of  prac- 
tical conduct  in  the  lives  of  multitudes  of  men. 

It  is  this  heroic  mold  of  life,  never  wanting  to  Christian- 
ity, that  has  been  the  secret  of  its  power  —  a  divinely 
inspired  enthusiasm  for  humanity.  Brahma  and  Buddha 
have  never  lacked  ascetics,  nor  Confucius  his  literary  sages 
and  astute  administrators  of  civic  affairs,  nor  Mohammed 
for  self-devoted  heralds  of  his  prophetic  mission;  nor  has 
Jesus  Christ  ever  lacked  men  of  amazing  organizing  power, 


388  PROCLAIMING  THE  LAW  OF  LOVE. 

a  match  for  emperors  and  kings,  who  have  been  actuated 
by  self-sacrificing  love  for  mankind,  proclaiming  the  univer- 
sal law  of  love  and  so  far  enforcing  it  as  to  work  moral 
miracles  and  build  up  mighty  nations  of  Christian  freemen 
whose  lives  are  —  to  a  degree  never  before  known  upon  the 
earth  —  regulated  by  wholesome  moral  law.  Is  it  not  this 
spirit  of  the  Master,  embodied  in  multitudes  of  disciples, 
that  will  ultimately  sweep  all  before  it,  and  subject  the 
world?  Its  intensity  of  movement,  its  moral  elevation,  its 
stupendous  philanthropic  machinery,  will  dominate  this 
planet,  bringing  in  the  kingdom  of  Him  whose  right  it  is 
to  rule. 


CHAPTER  NINE:  THE  TIME  ELEMENT  IN  THE 
FUTURE  OF  MAN'S  MORAL  EVOLUTION. 

Were  the  story  of  Christianity  to  be  divided  into  seven 
ages/  the  seventh  would  be  that  period  which  our  Sacred 
Books  refer  to  as  the  Millennial  Reign  of  Christ  in  his 
Kingdom  upon  the  earth,  and  its  geological  counterpart 
w^ould  be  the  present  "Age  of  Man."  This  geological  age 
has  already  existed  during  some  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
years  past,  in  which  there  has  been  no  great  change  in 
climatic  conditions;-  and  it  will  continue  to  exist  without 
material  change  of  the  atmospheric  conditions,  needful  for 
man's  occupancy  of  the  earth,  during  some  hundreds  of 
thousands  or  millions  of  years  to  come.  This  is  the  agreed 
upon  judgment  of  the  most  eminent  physicists,  represent- 
ing the  geological  and  the  astronomical  departments  of  our 
great  universities.  Some  millions  of  years  to  come,  is  the 
expression  in  the  most  authoritative  astronomical  books; 
and  the  geologists  who  have  traced  the  past  look  for  no 
material  change  during  more  than  fifty  thousand  genera- 
tions of  men  in  coming  ages.  Said  Agassiz, —  the  earth  is 
in  its  infancy  still.^ 

What,  then,  shall  be  said  of  five  or  six  score  generations 
past,  in  which  Hebraic  and  Christian  ideas  have  been  so 
crude,  in  which  Brahmanism  has  degenerated  into  Hin- 
duism, in  which  Gautama  has  failed  to  enlighten  Asia,  in 
which  the  Confucian  philosophy  has  proved  of  no  avail  to 
iiplift  the  masses  of  China,  and  in  which  Islam  has  found 

Wide  Chapter  I,  p.  7,  supra. 

^L.  Agassiz,  Geological  Sketches,  p.  18.     Boston,  1866. 

'Guizot,  as  a  historical  student,  expressed  the  same  thought  as 
to  the  world's  civilization. —  History  of  Civilization,  I,  p.  18, 
London,  1846. 

The  same  thought  I  have  found  in  Charles  Sumner's  Works, 
"Vol.  II,  pp.  119-122.     Boston,  1870. 


390  THE  FUTURE   OF   MORAL   EVOLUTION. 

itself  unadapted  to  world-wide  extension.  As  sure  as  the 
continuance  of  the  diurnal  revolution  of  the  earth,  and  its 
movement  around  the  sun,  will  be  the  continued  moral  evo- 
lution of  mankind.  And  the  moral  experiments  already 
made  upon  so  vast  a  scale  during  five  thousand  years  past 
throw  great  light  upon  the  ultimate  social  outcome  of  the 
progress  of  our  race  during  a  future  period  one  or  two 
hundred  times  as  great.  What  is  the  Divine  Kingdom^ 
on  earth  other  than  that  combination  of  individuals  for 
mutual  service  which  is  fundamental  to  a  progressive  state 
of  society;  and  the  perfecting  of  society  through  the  vol- 
untary acceptance  of  the  moral  law  of  supreme  love  to 
God  and  perfect  love  to  man  as  the  ordinary  and  inevitable 
rule  for  daily  living;  the  human  race  being  made  a  unit 
through  mutual  helpfulness  and  through  following  the 
same  moral  aims  and  imitating  the  same  moral  ideal.  Is 
not  the  promotion  of  all  this,  at  this  very  hour,  the  leading 
aim  in  life  of  a  vast  body  of  thrifty  business  men  who  plan 
to  win  the  world  for  the  spiritual  reign  of  Jesus  Christ? 

If  it  be  considered  what  has  been  wrought  in  a  few  scores 
of  generations  past,  is  it  not  certain  through  the  continu- 
ance of  processes  already  begun,  that  during  some  thou- 
sands of  generations  to  come  the  idea  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God  will  pass  from  the  realm  of  Christian  rhetoric  into  a 
triumphant  reign  with  historical  record?  Will  not  the 
godlike  nature  of  man,  when  renewed  by  divine  energy  and 
animated  by  divine  love,  become  finally  subject  to  the  sec- 
ond table  of  the  Moral  Law  during  the  beneficent  reign  of 
the  All-Father  age  after  age?  Throughout  evolutionary 
processes  during  ages  so  vast  as  to  suggest  the  cycles  of 
eternity,  this  globe  will  be  peopled  by  generations  that  will 
voluntarily  seek  those  higher  and  higher  moral  ideas  for 
the  earth,  as  the  outer  court  of  Heaven,  which  are  befitting 
the  heirs  of  an  immortal  heritage.  The  entire  moral  train- 
ing of  mankind  has  had  this  in  view, —  the  creation  of  a 

^Chapter  II,  Section  v;  Chapter  VI,  Section  viii;  Chapter  VIII, 
Section  vi;  supra. 


THE   KINGDOM  OF  GOD.  391 

new  era  of  fraternal  love.  Our  sacred  theories,  Hebraic 
and  Christian,  during  four  score  generations  have  held  to 
this  thought ;  and  it  has  now  become  one  of  the  foremost  of 
evolutionary  forces,  effecting  changes  upon  a  vast  and 
expanding  scale  in  the  domestic  and  social  and  civic  condi- 
tion of  continental  areas  of  the  globe,  and  to  the  isles  of 
the  earth  it  has  given  a  new  law.  So  a  radiant  hope  for 
the  social  future  of  mankind  is  held  out  by  Christianity. 
"The  earth  is  given  to  God's  people  in  trust  to  fit  it  for 
his  reign. "^  "The  Kingdom  of  God  is  but  the  true  fulfil- 
ment of  human  life  and  society.  "- 

The  sublime  prophecies  of  the  early  seers  of  our  faith  are 
now  interpreted  by  the  self-revelation  of  God  in  nature. 
The  uncounted  millenniums  of  the  present  geological  and 
astronomical  era  of  our  planet  make  reasonable  the  calm 
and  intelligent  planning  of  the  Son  of  Man,  as  he 
announced  the  principles  upon  which  his  disciples  —  ener- 
gized by  the  Holy  Spirit  —  should  proceed,  in  order  to 
bring  in  the  harmonious  reign  of  God  as  earth's  benedic- 
tion. "The  hope  of  good  for  this  earth,"  says  Maurice,^ 
*  *  is  essentially  involved  in  all  the  promises  of  God ;  we  must 
suppress  the  most  obvious  statements  in  Scripture*  if  we 
refuse  to  cherish  it."  The  Christian  Books  evince  no 
divine  plan  to  crush  out  the  hopes  of  humanity,  but  every- 
where call  upon  us  to  listen  for  the  stately  steps  of  man's 
Redeemer.  It  is  not  in  Christianity,  that  civilization  shall 
perish  amid  cries  of  pain  and  despair.  What  is  more  rea- 
sonable than  the  vision  of  Bishop  Butler,  in  which  he  sup- 
poses a  society  perfectly  virtuous  for  a  succession  of  many 
ages,  in  which  injustice    by    fraud    or    force    would    be 

^Dr.  Alexander  McKenzie.     ^Phillips  Brooks. 

^Lectures  on  the  Apocalypse,  Second  Edition,  p.  303.  London, 
18S5. 

'Without  citing  the  earliest  passages  in  that  effulgent  succes- 
sion of  texts  that  betokened  to  the  Hebrews  the  coming  of  Mes- 
siah and  his  reign,  such  citations  as  these  may  be  noted: — Ps. 
2:7,8;  22:27-28.  Isa.  2:  2-4;  11:6,9;  60:21;  66:  23-  Micah 
4:  3.     Zech.  9:  10;     14:  9.     Heb.  8:  10,  11.     Rev.  11:  15. 


892 


COSMIC   CONDITIONS. 


unknown,  in  which  cunning,  false  self-interest  and  confed- 
eracies for  evil-doing  would  have  no  place,  but  in  Avhich 
wisdom,  public  spirit  and  fidelity,  would  make  such  a  king- 
dom or  society  superior  to  all  others,  and  which  would  ulti- 
mately win  to  its  allegiance  all  mankind.^  It  is  this  ideal 
that  is  the  animating  hope  and  aim  of  our  faith,  which 
enters  into  the  daily  prayer  and  practical  planning  and 
patient  effort  of  scores  of  millions  of  disciples:  and  will 
not  the  salt  of  the  earth  some  day  season  it,  and  will  not 
the  Light  of  the  World  some  day  enlighten  it  ? 

Is  our  atmosphere  to  be  depended  upon?  A  certain 
degree  of  heat  and  of  cold?  A  certain  humidity?  The 
conditions  for  man 's  life  upon  the  globe  ?  They  have  been 
so  unvarying,  during  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years,  that 
there  has  never  yet  been  any  atmospheric  accident  to  which 
the  animal  man  has  not  been  able  to  adapt  himself.  So, 
too,  for  vast  stretches  of  time  in  the  future,  it  can  be 
depended  upon  that  a  morally  perfected  race  will  maintain 
its  footing  upon  this  globe.  Man,  says  Dean  Shaler,  may 
not  be  of  long  life  or  of  stronger  physique  than  now,  the 
human  constitution  is  not  likely  to  change,  man  will  be 
short-lived  and  w^eak;  man's  intellect  may  gain  accumu- 
lated wisdom,  but  in  native  power  not  expand  beyond  that 
of  the  great  man  of  former  ages,  the  builders  of  the  pyra- 
mids and  the  most  notable  of  the  Greeks ;  but  in  moral  life 
the  race  will  make  advancement.-  In  likeness  to  the  moral 
image  of  the  Son  of  Man,  the  perfectability  of  the  race  has 
not  reached  its  limit;  and  in  moral  evolution  the  ages  are 
before  us.  If  Princeton  astronomy  is  reasonable,  a  hun- 
dred thousand  generations  of  an  improved  type  of  man 
may  follow  the  reptilian  and  beastly  types  of  those  who 
have  lived  in  the  dawn  of  human  history.^ 

^Analogy,  I,  iii,  Sections  29,  30. 
-A  conversation:  October,  1903. 

^Compare  Professor  Charles  A.  Young's  Sun,  revised  edition,  p. 

318.     New  York,  1895;  and  his  Astronomy,  p.  524.     Boston,  1893. 

Newcomb's  Astronomy,  p.  516  (compare  revised  edition,  p.  501. 


AGES  AVAILABLE   FOR   MORAL   EVOLUTION.  393 

"There  is  nothing  to  indicate,"  says  Shaler,  "that  the 
clock  is  running  down."  Our  planet  was  intended  for 
ages.  If  not  just  now  made  habitable  for  man,  it  is  only 
just  now  that  it  has  been  actually  taken  possession  of  by 
man  intelligent  enough  to  record  his  own  history ;  and  only 
just  now  the  earth  has  had  any  large  human  population 
upon  it.  It  has  been  given  over  to  wild  beasts  for  innu- 
merable cycles  of  time.  At  the  dawn  of  man's  historic 
'era  —  China  five  thousand  years  ago,  the  Aryan  race  before 
India  was  occupied,  the  early  Assyrians,  early  Egyptians, 
and  the  hunting  tribes  of  Europe,  Africa  and  earliest 
America, —  the  total  human  census  could  have  comprised 
only  a  few  millions.  In  the  slow  process  of  evolving  his 
physical  constitution,  but  few  specimens  of  the  animal  man 
can  be  traced  through  surviving  remains ;  and  in  the  periods 
of  time  we  call  historic,  the  worst  men  morally  have  been 
so  few  when  compared  with  the  world's  population  during 
scores  upon  scores  of  thousands  of  generations  to  come,  that 
any  comparison  would  be  like  that  of  a  single  leaf  com- 
pared with  all  that  wave  in  the  w^orld's  forests,  or  like  a 
few  drops  of  spray  compared  with  our  planetary  oceans. 

Take  England, —  read  what  Macaulay  says  of  the  unre- 
deemed areas  of  land  within  a  recent  period.  Think  for 
how  long  a  period  before  that,  it  had  been  so  —  for  an 
inestimable  time  prior  to  the  cave-dwellers.     Look  over  the 

New  York,  1880),  assumes  that  our  earth  will  be  habitable  for 
some  millions  of  years.  Lord  Kelvin  (Popular  Science  Monthly, 
May,  1887,  p.  26)  implies  a  period  quite  as  long.  To  the  writer, 
in  questioning,  the  Director  of  Harvard  Observatory  gave  his 
assent  to  the  reasonableness  of  a  period  of  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  years  as  the  legitimate  expectation  of  man's  possession  of  the 
earth:  and  a  period  of  millions  of  years  was  deemed  by  the  head 
of  the  Geological  Department  as  probable  for  the  future  age  of 
mankind.  Professor  Williston  of  Chicago  University,  and  Dr. 
See  of  the  national  Naval  Observatory,  are  at  one,  in  specifying 
certain  millions  of  years  for  human  life  upon  our  globe. 

Charles  Darwin  (More  Letters,  II,  pp.  260,  261),  speaks  of 
man's  progress  as  continuing  during  millions  of  years,  with  every 
continent  swarming  with  good  and  enlightened  men. 


394  THE  DIVINE  PURPOSE 

island  morally  to-day,  the  "Darkest  England"  part  of  it, 
In  moral  evolution,  it  is  not  perfected.  Yet  the  regener- 
ative processes  that  have  been  already  at  work  for  forty 
generations  —  if  carried  on  during  a  hundred  thousand 
generations  to  come  that  the  scientists  promise, —  will  make 
England  a  heaven  upon  earth  to  dwell  in.  Less  than  forty 
generations  ago.  Great  Britain  was  a  savage  state ;  that  it  is 
not  now,  is  due  to  Christianity;  give  this  religion  forty 
thousand  generations  more  to  work  in,  and  by  that  slow 
process  which  God  has  chosen  for  the  moral  evolution  of 
man,  the  ideal  of  that  state  which  was  imagined  by  the 
Bishop  of  Durham  in  his  Analogy  will  certainly  be  fulfilled. 

We  have  to  do  with  cosmic  conditions,  the  future  is 
assured.  Here  is  a  man  in  power,  pompous  and  unjust. 
In  the  perfected  ages  of  the  earth,  he  will,  if  known  about, 
be  thought  of,  as  we  now  think  of  a  man  primeval  standing 
out  against  the  suggestions  of  an  incipient  conscience. 
Man's  moral  life  is  the  direction  for  his  expansion:  in  this 
alone  is  he  worthy  of  the  eons  to  come  and  the  realms  of 
immortality.  Is  not  human  life  now  in  a  cosmic  setting, 
as  in  a  frame?  Man's  moral  evolution  is  for  the  ages,  as 
much  so  as  if  it  were  part  of  the  frame  of  nature;  the 
Creator  choosing  to  have  it  so, —  the  divine  energy  being 
immanent  alike  in  material  and  in  moral  development. 

What  therefore  Professor  Royce  calls  ''the  Invisible 
Moral  Order ' '  demands  time  for  its  unfolding  —  the  divine 
purpose  in  human  history.  Not  yet  can  Tolstoi's  dreams 
of  peace  be  fulfilled ;  but  they  will  be :  the  Golden  Rule  will 
yet  govern.  In  a  hundred  thousand  years  from  now,  it 
will  be  said  that  we,  who  lived  so  near  the  dawn  of  the 
historic  era,  made  war  upon  our  brother  Christians  that  we 
might  possess  ourselves  of  what  belonged  to  them.  In  that 
age,  to-day's  moral  grossness  in  India,  in  China,  and  in 
Christendom,  will  excite  pity  and  wonder,  unless  the  imma- 
turity that  now  characterizes  moral  evolution  upon  the 
globe  may  be  happily  forgotten  by  the  scores  of  thousands 
of  generations  that  will  possess  the  earth  before  present 
cosmic  conditions  are  disturbed. 


IN  HUMAN  HISTORY.  395 

Men  do  not  think  of  the  vastness  of  the  plans  of  God,  as 
he  develops  his  Kingdom  through  the  centuries  and  millen- 
niums of  history :  plans  extending  from  everlasting  to  ever- 
lasting, and  embracing  the  countless  worlds  now  in  silent 
evolution  around  us  —  a  hundred  million  suns.  Do  we, 
indeed,  wonder  why  for  a  moment  he  tolerates  wrongs,  and 
impatiently  ask  "Where  is  the  promise  of  his  coming?" 

Had  we  been  inhabitants  of  some  other  world  through 
millions  of  years  past,  as  we  shall  soon  be  the  inhabitants 
of  some  other  world  for  millions  of  years  to  come;  and  if 
we  were  acquainted  with  all  the  events  transpiring  upon 
this  globe;  and  if  we  had  lived  to  see  the  creation  and  his- 
tory and  the  consuming  of  one  globe  and  another  in  the 
universe  around  us, —  could  we  so  have  looked  upon  a  thou- 
sand years  as  one  day; — we  should  better  comprehend  the 
varied  movements  upon  this  earth,  during  any  brief  period 
of  history.  Has  the  Creator  of  the  worlds,  by  an  orderly 
process  of  his  choosing,  guided  the  phj^sical  and  moral  evo- 
lution of  man?  Is  the  growth,  too,  of  his  moral  kingdom 
upon  earth  like  the  growth  of  a  globe,  slow  and  with  painful 
revolutions  and  seeming  reverses,  but  age  after  age  prepar- 
ing for  the  habitation  of  a  perfected  race  during  myriads 
of  ages? 

To  make  clear  what  has  been  said, —  concerning  the  slow 
and  sure  evolution  of  our  planet  during  the  eons  of  geo- 
logical time  to  illustrate  the  divine  method  in  moral  devel- 
opment,—  an  allusion  may  be  made  to  the  geological  his- 
tory of  Chicago.  So  far  as  relates  to  America,  we  are  to 
think  of  the  primeval  ocean  as  broken  only  b.y  the  appear- 
ance of  the  Laurentian  hills  of  Canada,  the  first  permanent 
land  upon  the  globe,  and  by  the  Appalachian  mountains,. 
and  by  the  elevation  of  California  above  the  sea.  Silurian 
Chicago  was  at  that  time  a  coral  reef  white  with  breaking 
billows,  a  reef  two  hundred  thousand  years  in  building. 
It  was  but  little  above  sea  level  at  the  close  of  the  Silurian 
period.  And  there  is  no  further  story  till  the  time  of  the 
ice  drift.     Probably  at  the  close  of  the  Silurian  age  a  low 


•396  THE   GEOLOGY  OF   CHICAGO. 

mountain  range  had  been  uplifted,  extending  from  what  is 
now  Lake  Superior  to  Chicago,  thence  east  into  northern 
Indiana, —  this  range  being  planed  off  in  the  ice  age.  The 
great  lakes  were  the  product  of  the  ice  age,  there  being 
vast  valleys  before  that,  which  were  deepened  and  filled  by 
the  melting  ice  sheet.  Huron,  Erie  and  Ontario  were  one 
lake  pouring  into  the  Ohio.  Lake  Michigan  poured  south, 
making  a  depression  of  some  two  thousand  feet  in  the  rim 
of  the  lake.  This  it  was  which  determined  the  present 
location  of  Chicago.  When  the  receding  w^ater  finally 
poured  eastward  instead  of  southward,  a  low  watershed 
was  subsequently  formed  in  the  depression  made  by  the  old 
southern  outlet,  over  which  the  American  aborigines  passed 
between  the  lake  and  the  Illinois  river  into  the  valley  of 
the  Mississippi.  It  was  at  this  point  of  the  passing  over, 
that  the  city  was  located. 

Onward  and  onward  rolled  the  weary  ages,  during  which, 
from  a  business  man's  point  of  view,  the  site  of  the  city 
had  no  economic  value.  Slowly  but  surely  rose  the  con- 
tinent to  such  a  height  near  the  surface  of  the  primeval 
ocean,  that  during  ages  of  wild  agitation  the  sea  could  beat 
upon  the  coral  reefs  of  the  future  city.  Slowly  and  pain- 
fully some  fifty  geological  periods  then  passed,  represent- 
ing millions  upon  millions  of  years.  So  remote,  indeed,  was 
that  geological  period  when  Chicago  was  first  thought  of, 
that  it  seems  to  us  to  reach  almost  back  to  the  realms  of 
chaos  and  ancient  night.  If  during  all  this  period  the  site 
of  the  city  has  been  preparing,  who  shall  wonder  if,  from 
a  moral  point  of  view,  it  may  take  many  an  age  now  to 
lift  Chicago  once  and  forever  out  of  that  sea  of  mm  under 
which  it  is  now  submerged,  and  to  rid  the  city  of  a  few 
■citizens  who  are  morally  not  unlike  the  reptiles  of  the 
Silurian  period?  The  idea  underlying  the  Christian  tem- 
perance reformation  is  not  yet  a  hundred  years  old,  and 
it  is  too  soon  to  expect  for  it  a  sweeping  and  final  triumph 
in  the  great  cities  of  Christendom,  whether  Chicago  or  Lon- 
don.    As  in  the  geological  periods  long  past,  one  set  of 


LAW  OF  PROGRESS  IN  FAITH    AND  MORALS.  397 

animals  overlapped  the  next  life  era,  so  now  many  reptilian 
social  customs,  that  Christianity  ought  to  have  killed  out 
long  ago,  still  survive.  But  when  Christianity  has  reigned 
a  hundred  thousand  years  upon  this  globe,  the  historians 
will  point  back  to  us  as  the  creatures  who  were  three  thou- 
sand generations  nearer  than  themselves  to  the  apes  and 
the  brutes. 

Our  Christianity  makes  no  claim  for  representing  a  fairly 
perfect  moral  evolution,  it  does,  however,  claim  to  make 
moral  progress,  by  a  slow  and  orderly  development. 

It  seems  to  be  the  law  of  progress  that  systems  of  reli- 
gious faith,  and  of  morality,  which  develop  throughout 
long  intervals  of  time,  appreciably  advance  only  through  a 
succession  of  gradual  stages  or  by  epochs,  each  marked  by 
the  prominence  or  emphasis  given  to  some  new  idea,  which 
is,  however,  rooted  in  the  past.  In  this  way  continuity  is 
preserved,  and  the  generations  are  bound  together.  The 
ethnic  stock  brings  forth  fruit  after  its  kind.  The  future 
will  spring  from  the  present,  as  the  present  sprang  from 
the  past.  Great  changes  follow  the  rule  of  a  slow  progres- 
sion. The  future  course  of  history  can  in  nowise  be  dis- 
cerned unless  through  the  indisputable  changes  that  have 
already  taken  place.  No  great  epoch  is  a  mere  disconnected 
leap.  It  is  prepared  for,  and  happens  with  reason ;  and  it 
is  related  to  what  follows.  It  is  so  in  the  evolution  of  the 
globe  itself,  in  the  succession  of  geological  epochs;  it  is  so 
in  human  laws,  and  in  morals,  and  in  the  religious  beliefs 
of  mankind.  In  the  moral  evolution  of  man,  we  have  to  do 
with  vast  races  and  long  periods.  The  confessed  deficien- 
cies of  Christianity  require  time  for  correction  —  a  great 
deal  of  time,  if  we  judge  from  the  story  of  past  centuries. 
And  the  other  great  religions  of  the  globe  cannot  be  greatly 
modified  from  within,  or  changed  from  without,  except 
through  gradual  processes  whose  roots  find  life  and  nour- 
ishment in  the  nature  of  the  great  ethnic  stock  from  which 
each  religion  has  sprung.  The  ontramping  innumerable 
hosts  of  God,  with  all  their  diverse  racial  characteristics, 


398 


THE  LAW  IN  MORAL  PROGRESS. 


must  advance  through  methods  that  accord  with  the  genius 
of  their  own  people  under  the  leadership  of  the  Divine 
Spirit.  The  greatest  changes  are  wrought  only  through 
grafting  new  ideas  upon  an  old  stock ;  to  graft  a  new  scion 
upon  a  wild  olive  tree  was  an  early  simile.  To  eradicate 
the  old  stock  is  not  the  method.  Keligion  is,  however,  of 
the  soul's  life  —  the  vital  current  in  its  relations  to  God 
and  man, —  as  distinguished  from  intellectual  tenets  held 
by  philosophy.  Religions,  therefore,  which  are  separated 
in  their  radical  ideas  cannot  be  intergrafted  by  living 
scions.  No  student  of  the  geological  history  of  the  earth; 
no  student  of  the  slow  growth  of  nations,  of  governments, 
of  cities,  of  literatures, —  the  Hebrew,  Greek,  Roman, 
French,  German,  English,  or  the  Oriental;  no  student  of 
the  sublime  Scriptural  prophecies  of  the  long  ages  in  which 
the  perfected  human  race  will  abide  upon  this  planet, — 
will  be  impatient  if  many  generations  come  and  go  before 
all  wild  places  are  transformed  into  the  garden  of  the 
Lord.  Unless  Christianity  appreciates  whatever  is  vital 
and  genuine  in  the  religious  experience  of  non-Christian 
peoples,  and  can  so  present  its  own  essential  verities  to  all 
truth-seekers  as  to  meet  the  most  urgent  international  moral 
needs  of  the  varied  children  of  God  throughout  the  earth,  it 
can  never  be  the  universal  religion.  It  can  extend  only 
through  an  orderly  change,  through  the  gradual  acceptance 
by  a  people  of  new  views  for  the  conduct  of  life, —  the 
principles  introduced  by  Jesus  Christ,  the  love  of  God,  love 
to  God  and  love  to  man, —  which  must  be  so  expressed  as  to 
accord  wdth  the  mode  of  thought  native  to  this  race  or  that. 
It  is  the  glory  of  Christianity  that  an  independent  Chris- 
tian experience  must  be  correlated  by  an  independent  inter- 
pretation of  the  essence  of  the  faith  under  the  illumination 
of  the  Divine  Spirit,  and  the  orderly  development  and 
application  of  the  truth  so  interpreted  to  individual  life 
and  society  according  to  laws  growing  naturally  out  of  a 
racial  past. 

Religious  forms   are  transitory.     In  a  world-conscious- 


''natural"  evolution  of  moral  power.  399 

ness  of  the  truth  of  God's  love  in  Jesus  Christ,  there  can 
be  such  credal  and  liturgical  unanimity  only  as  may  consist 
with  individual  and  racial  differences.  Asia  can  therefore 
never  be  carried  by  storm  through  a  "hustling"  type  of 
Christianity,  nor  can  Christianity  itself  be  made  conform- 
able to  the  moral  type  of  the  INIaster  through  evolutionary 
processes  that  are  at  war  with  that  law  of  slow  but  sure 
progress  which  was  adopted  by  the  Creator  in  forming 
man's  mental  constitution  in  his  own  image.  The  present 
springs  from  the  past,  and  the  ideal  of  to-day  is  the  law  of 
tomorrow.  As  the  geological  forces,  representing  the  divine 
immanence  in  nature,  are  still  modifying  our  planet,  so  in 
the  moral  development  of  the  human  race  there  is  a  gradual 
elevation  like  that  which  is  inappreciably  uplifting  moun- 
tain ranges  at  this  hour.  By  the  all  penetrating  energy  of 
the  Divine  Spirit,  making  itself  felt  through  subordinate 
agencies,  the  serene  ages  of  God's  peace  will  some  day  dawn 
upon  the  earth.  And  this  final  triumphant  sway  of  the 
Moral  Law,  transforming  the  earth  to  the  likeness  of 
Heaven,  is  represented  by  the  Christian  Scriptures  as  pro- 
ducable  through  a  divine  method  that  manifests  itself  in 
the  ordinary  course  of  God's  providential  government  and 
through  the  gradual  extension  of  his  Kingdom  in  the  earth. 
It  is  in  this  sense  that  "the  road  to  the  millennium  is  a 
passable  road."^  It  is  a  road  that  can  be  traveled  by 
humanity. 

If  spontaneous  development  is  sometimes  spoken  of,  it 
illustrates  what  appears,  upon  the  surface,  to  be  the  process 
in  the  distinctive  evolution  of  the  moral  kingdom  of  God; 
a  process  in  which  the  underlying  divine  energy  is  secre- 
tive,—  we  say  that  the  method  is  naturalistic.  It  cannot 
so  properly  be  said  that  we  do  not  appreciate  the  majesty 
of  those  mighty  movements  of  which  we  ourselves  are  a 
part,  as  that  we  scarcely  notice  the  movement, —  still  less 
think  of  it  as  the  manifestation  of  the  hidden  divine  power 
in  carrying  out  the  divine  purpose.     By  human  discussions 

^Professor  George  N.  Marden's  phrase,  in  an  unpublished  paper. 


400 


THE  PRESENT  HEROIC  AGE. 


and  daily  experiences  that  seem  to  us  as  common  and  nat- 
ural as  the  springing  of  the  grass  or  the  unfolding  of  bud 
and  blossom,  the  Kingdom  of  God  among  men  is  carried 
forward  without  ostentation,  and  so  silently  as  to  pass 
unheeded  by  the  careless  observer. 

If  through  the  heroic  service  of  the  choicest  spirits  in  the 
Church  during  some  centuries ;  if  through  infinite  toils  and 
self-sacrifice  during  five  hundred  or  a  thousand  years  of 
patient  progress  in  Christianizing  China,  India,  Africa  j 
even  though  the  majestic  movement  of  the  Kingdom  of  God 
is  discerned  only  by  eyes  blinded  by  human  sorrow,  gener- 
ation after  generation  of  living  martyrdom,  in  proclaiming- 
Christ  and  Him  crucified  to  peoples  as  stolid  at  heart  as. 
their  idols  of  clay,  of  stone,  of  bronze  or  gold ;  even  though 
the  homely  houses  where  Christianity  is  first  proclaimed  are 
not  hastily  rebuilt  in  the  splendor  of  celestial  pattern, — 
yet  the  redemption  of  the  world  will  hasten  in  His  time 
who  made  it,  and  the  beauty  of  the  Lord  God  will  crown, 
the  earth. 

How  greatly  will  be  envied  in  the  future  those  who  are 
now  privileged  to  be  the  founders  of  new  institutes  in  new 
realms  of  the  Divine  Kingdom  on  earth, —  to  do  deeds 
never  possible  for  those  who  come  later,  to  encounter  diffi- 
culties that  will  never  disturb  the  later  if  not  happier  lot. 
In  a  thousand  generations  from  now,  these  very  years  in 
which  we  live  will  be  included  in  the  heroic  ages  of  the 
world,  the  ages  of  surpassing  moral  endeavor  to  walk  in 
the  steps  of  the  Saviour  of  men  in  blissful  self-sacrifice  for 
the  sake  of  others. 

The  vast  industrial  changes,  that  are  at  this  moment 
taking  place  in  Japan,  China,  India,  and  all  southern  Asia, 
betoken  the  dawn  of  a  new  era  in  the  civilization  of  one- 
half  the  human  race.  The  Occident  is  welcome  to  the 
Orient  in  its  tools,  in  its  capital,  in  its  trained  workmen, 
in  its  ideas  for  the  development  of  natural  resources,  in  its 
new  ideals  of  domestic  life,  in  its  educational  methods,  its 
sciences,  its  literatures,  its  moral  thought,  and  in  its  phi- 
lanthropy. 


DIVINE  ENERGY   IN   MORAL   EVOLUTION.  401 

Is  not  the  miracle  of  the  early  church,  in  this  way,  repeat- 
ing itself  iu  suiting  the  genius  of  Christianity  to  every 
man's  own  language?  What  race  can  escape  from  its  own 
early  environment?  Do  not  the  Orientals  think  of  Christ 
as  an  Englishman?  Through  ages  of  heredity  the  ancient 
peoples  of  every  type,  that  receive  Christ  as  Master  and 
Lord,  will  never  become  Anglo-Saxons.  The  spiritual  har- 
monies of  coming  ages  will  be  voiced  in  a  myriad  tongues, 
and  new  types  of  Christianity  adapted  to  new  disciples  of 
old  racial  stock,  will  gladden  the  earth.  So  will  be  coor- 
dinated those  elements  of  eternal  truth  which  have  been 
expressed  by  the  great  faiths  of  the  world  during  the  mil- 
leniums  of  history. 

''The  spirit  of  God,"  that  first  moved  upon  the  waters^ 
bringing  forth  the  order  and  beauty  of  the  creation  from 
chaos,  "is  to  be  depended  upon  as  a  factor  in  this  world's 
moral  progress."^  Through  this  Divine  Psychic  Energy,, 
exercised  in  a  manner  analogous  to  the  energy  put  forth 
in  material  evolution,  and  with  a  grandeur  and  breadth 
like  that  of  a  vast  cosmic  movement,  the  earth's  populations 
will  little  by  little  be  drawn  to  the  Son  of  Man,  and  volun- 
tarily take  his  yoke  upon  them,  and  learn  of  him.  In  this; 
will  be  found  the  seed  germ  of  all  social  reforms,  through 
processes  extended  during  the  ages.  Is  not  the  trend  of  his- 
tory toward  the  imitation  of  Christ?  Through  this  move- 
ment, continued  age  after  age  for  scores  of  thousands  of 
generations,  an  illuminated  and  purified  race  will  rejoice 
in  the  spiritual  splendor  of  the  closing  days  of  human  his- 
tory,—  in  a  divine  spiritual  reign  appropriate  to  the  pure 
character  of  the  Son  of  Man. 

'Dr.  R.  S.  Storrs. 


26 


APPENDIX 


A.     The  Monks  of  Christendom.' 

The  tendency  on  the  part  of  some  to  enter  into  a  hermit  or 
monastic  life  is  too  deeply  rooted  in  human  nature  to  be  easily 
eradicated,  expressing  as  it  does  the  soul's  desire  to  bid  the  world 
stand  aside,  that  one  may  be  alone  to  solve  life's  highest  prob- 
lems. Were  there  not  recluse  Jews  before  John  the  Baptist? 
Did  not  Elijah  glorify  his  hermitage?  Austere  were  the  haunts 
of  the  Nazarites,  and  the  great  Herald  of  Messiah.  In  advance 
of  their  age  were  certain  ideals  of  the  Essenes,  separate  in  their 
city  life  or  in  their  holy  wildernesses.  If,  in  part,  these  ascetics 
antedated  Gautama,  none  of  them  lived  so  early  as  anchorite 
.Brahmans  at  a  period  so  remote  as  that  in  which  the  plains  of 
India  were  covered  by  forests.  Have  not  our  Aryan  saints  had 
a  genius  for  solitude  during  a  hundred  generations?  As  an 
enduring  type  for  all  ages,  therefore,  it  was  easy  for  Gautama  to 
xnake  the  monastic  life  the  very  kernel  of  an  Oriental  system. 
Yet  in  founding  the  spiritual  world  of  the  West,  the  Son  of  Man 
taught  his  disciples  that  the  light  of  holiness  should  never  be 
hidden  under  a  bushel;  and  the  apostolic  founders  of  the  King- 
dom of  Love  mingled  in  the  society  of  their  times,  seeking  to 
purify  it  as  the  salt  of  the  world.  Nevertheless,  early  in  the 
Christian  ages,  with  the  growing  spirituality  of  some,  came  a 
growing  distaste  for  the  world  as  it  was;  most  eminent  saints 
reverting  to  the  Oriental  type,  entertaining  pessimistic  views  of 
life,  as  Gautama  did,  as  the  early  Aryan  sages  did.  They  fled 
from  men,  and  hid  themeslves  in  deserts  solitary  as  the  watery 
waste  of  the  middle  sea.  Nor  is  there  any  more  beautiful  picture 
in  history  than  one  that  might  be  made  of  the  faces,  surpassingly 
sweet,  aglow  with  the  light  of  God,  of  well-to-do  young  men  and 
maidens,  who  gave  their  goods  to  the  poor,  and  retired  into  lonely 
places  that  they  might  be  alone  with  God.  Such  was  St.  Antony, 
■of  noble  blood,  with  life  far  nobler  than  Mark  Antony,  whose 
name  he  bore.  His  life  story  related  by  Athanasius  was  one 
factor  in  leading  Augustine  to  make  a  sharp  turn  in  his  youthful 
life. 

This  movement  was,  in  part,  the  protest  of  the  few  against  the 
wearing  of  the  robes  of  paganism  by  the  most.     The  low  plane 

iTo  illustrate  the  historic  parallel  referred  to  in  Chapter  V,  p.  175,  supra. 


TPIE  MONKS  OF  CHRISTENDOM.  403 

of  the  average  Christian  living,  the  merely  nominal  Christianity 
of  the  great  mass,  the  conformity  to  the  world,  led  not  a  few 
devout  persons  to  abandon  society,  at  least  for  a  time.  Some 
returned  to  it  with  singularly  elevated  aims  in  life;  and  some 
still  tarried  in  the  deserts, —  of  whom  a  few  became  not  only  vis- 
ionary but  insane.  Among  the  most  eminent  men  of  the  Church 
were  those  who  tried  this  experiment  a  few  years;  so  long  only 
as  it  was  helpful  to  them.  Great  influence  against  the  custom 
was,  however,  exerted  by  the  most  powerful  preachers  of  the 
age: — With  society  inconceivably  corrupt,  why  should  men  fly 
from  it? 

It  was  but  the  day-dawn  of  the  Christian  Church,  and  the  men 
could  not  see  their  pathway  clearly.  So,  to-day,  the  ascetics  of 
India  have  little  light  to  go  by.  Many  of  these  devotees  in  the 
early  Church  had  slender  wants,  and  could  abide  in  the  wilder- 
ness as  easily  as  Elijah  and  John  the  Baptist.  Some  fled  to  the 
deserts  to  escape  persecution, —  preferring  the  cool  stars,  the 
hurtless  fires  of  God,  to  serving  as  fagots  to  light  the  gardens  of 
Nero.  Then,  too,  the  imminent  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  drove 
some  from  the  haunts  of  men;  they  heard  beforehand  the  crack- 
ling warnings,  and  made  good  their  escape. 

This  early  hermit  life  really  bore  fruitage  in  the  monasticism 
of  later  generations.  Artificial  solitudes  were  early  built  in  the 
cities  or  haunts  not  far  from  civilization,  monasteries,  which 
proved  to  be  more  convenient  to  most  who  desired  a  recluse  life 
than  to  abide  iu  a  desert.  These  religious  houses,  when  bar- 
barism was  tearing  Rome  to  pieces,  proved  to  be  strongholds  for 
the  conservatism  of  religious  life,  for  morality,  for  ecclesiastical 
art,  as  well  as  a  centre  for  authoritative  influence  when  the  civil 
government  was  weakening.  Indeed,  during  some  centuries, 
there  was  little  religious  force  outside  the  monasteries, —  even 
when  the  masses  of  people  outside  were  baptized.  The  convent 
and  the  monastery  drew  to  themselves  the  most  religious  of  the 
people,  who  craved  the  mysterious  spiritual  good  which  they 
believed  to  be  found  beneath  the  veil  of  that  tonsure  which  sym- 
bolized the  crown  of  thorns. 

"It  is  good,"  quoth  St.  Bernard,  "for  us  to  be  here;  for  here  a 
man  lives  more  purely,  falls  more  rarely,  rises  more  swiftly, 
walks  more  carefully,  rests  more  securely,  dies  more  happily,  is 
cleansed  moi'e  speedily,  is  rewarded  more  abundantly." 

Who  can  gaze  upon  the  saintly  Bonaventure  without  a  thrill 
of  reverence?  He  stood  silently  pointing  to  his  crucifix,  when 
he  was  asked  to  tell  how  he  acquired  his  vast  stores  of  learning. 
Mad  crowds  in  the  cities  were  rioting,  great  lords  were  wrangling 
and  waging  their  private  wars  for  plunder,  but  he  was  content 


404  APPENDIX. 

to  gaze  on  the  cross,  finding  in  it  the  profoundest  motive  to  lead 
a  loftier  life.  Others  naight  shine  in  the  court  or  play  a  great 
part  in  European  politics,  but  the  seraphic  doctor  was  content 
with  his  books  and  his  crucifix,  and  the  noiseless  round  of  homely 
monastic  servitude.  He  was  found  washing  pots  and  kettles  by 
the  messengers  from  Rome  who  brought  to  him  his  cardinal's  hat. 

"Six  things  you  must  observe,"  said  St.  Benedict,  "or  you  can- 
not abide  with  me:  three  virtues, — -silence,  humility,  obedience; 
three  occupations, —  worship,  study,  labor." 

As  the  great  religious  houses  were  prospered,  new  forces  of 
sell-denying  men  came  to  the  front,  eager  to  form  brotherhoods 
of  a  stricter  sort.  The  Dominican  order  was  founded  by  one  who 
in  his  youth  gave  away  all  he  possessed;  and  when  he  desired  to 
redeem  a  widow's  son,  he  had  nothing  left  but  his  poor  body, 
which  he  offered  to  have  sold  into  slavery  for  sweet  charity's  sake. 

The  doctrine  of  celibacy  was  a  protest  against  the  lust  of  the 
world.  The  doctrine  of  voluntary  poverty,  a  protest  against  lux- 
ury, against  the  bribes  which  ensnared  so  many  prelates,  against 
the  lust  for  gain,  that  covetousness  which  is  the  curse  of  the 
Church  in  all  ages.  To-day  and  yesterday  and  to-morrow,  gen- 
eration after  generation,  a  multitude  of  sick  folk  are  cared  for 
and  comforted  in  hospitals  founded  ages  ago  by  the  mendicant 
monks. 

The  mediaeval  monks  furnished  medicines  and  nursed  the  sick. 
They  taught  masters  to  free  their  slaves.  They  built  great 
churches  that  were  sanctuaries  for  the  unfortunate  which  no  one 
might  assail.  A  watch  was  kept  day  and  night  for  those  who 
sought  refuge.  They  furnished  homes  for  the  poor.  They  were 
hospitable;  to  every  monastery  travelers  resorted,  and  no  money 
was  exacted.  Aside  from  spiritual  activities  they  were  most 
useful  men.  The  agriculture  of  modern  times  owes  to  them  a 
debt:  as  a  class  they  were  industrious;  monkish  muscle  held  the 
plow;  they  wrought  in  flower  gardens  and  fruit  orchards.  St. 
Gall  raised  the  woodman's  axe  in  place  of  the  battle  axe  among 
savage  warriors.  St.  Columban  felled  the  timber  and  broke  the 
glebe,  like  an  Ohio  farmer;  and  maintained  a  night  and  day  song- 
service  for  years  among  the  hill  pines  of  Vosges. 

As  every  convent  made  tapestries  and  beautiful  vestments  for 
the  sacred  houses,  so  too  the  monasteries  were  manufactories, — 
they  made  books.  Men  became  copying  machines  for  the  good  of 
future  ages.  An  immense  obligation  from  the  students  of  to-day 
is  due  to  the  obscure  copyists  and  keepers  of  monastery  archives, 
who  preserved  classical  learning  for  the  renaissance  of  an  after 
age.     Sacred  manuscripts  were  greatly  multiplied,  many  of  them 


DECADENCE    OF    MONASTICISM    IN    CHRISTENDOM.         405 

being  illuminated  by  artistic  skill.  "Do  not,"  said  Thomas  a 
Kempis,  "trouble  yourself  at  the  fatigue  of  your  work,  for  God 
will  give  the  reward  in  eternity;  if  he  who  gives  a  glass  of  cold 
water  does  not  lose  his  reward,  he  who  gives  the  living  water  of 
wisdom  will  receive  recompense." 

And  with  anthems  of  thanksgiving  every  holy  house  was  vocal. 
Many  a  dull  day  in  the  narrow  cell  was  glorified  by  the  splendor 
of  celestial  visitation.  Young  men  with  hearts  of  fire,  studiously 
repressed  all  longings  for  the  earth,  for  earthly  companionship, 
for  domestic  love,  and  fastened  the  mind  upon  God  only,  and  the 
everlasting  rest. 

B.     The  Decadexce  of  Monasticism  ix  Christendom.' 

The  monastic  life  in  Europe  eventually  fell  into  an  ill-repute 
parallel  to  that  of  the  Buddhist  monks  in  portions  of  Asia.  The 
creative  genius  of  an  advancing  civilization  looked  upon  the  great 
religious  houses  as  of  an  abnormal  type;  and  the  Church  itself 
sought  to  check  their  growth.  A  committee  of  cardinals  in  1538 
recommended  that  all  should  be  abolished  by  forbidding  them  to 
receive  novices;  and  in  1650,  the  Venetian  ambassadors  at  Rome 
reported  to  their  government  an  interview  with  Pope  Alexander 
VII,  stating  that,  in  his  view,  many  should  be  suppressed,  having 
degenerated,  lost  their  discipline  and  in  some  cases  caused  scan- 
dal. Although  most  of  them  had  ceased  to  be  living  powers  for 
good,  they  had,  however,  vested  funds  for  their  maintenance;  and 
for  hundreds  of  years  the  monks  or  nuns  were  like  pensioners 
upon  old  foundations.  Had  the  brethren  been  obliged  to  go  for 
their  daily  bread  from  house  to  house  as  the  Buddhists  do,  the 
monasteries  would  have  been  broken  up  at  a  much  earlier  period. 
"When  Henry  VIII  of  England  took  possession  of  some  six  hun- 
dred religious  houses  in  a  district  half  the  size  of  Italy,  their 
revenues  were  not  far  from  three-fourths  of  a  million  dollars  a 
year.  This  was  when  the  English  population  was  not  far  from 
that  of  Burmah  now,  where  there  are  at  this  date  twenty-four 
times  as  many  monasteries  as  there  ever  were  in  England.  More 
than  a  thousand  religious  houses  were  suppressed  in  France  at 
the  time  of  the  French  Revolution  near  the  close  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  their  revenues  at  the  time  aggregated  some  nine- 
teen millions  of  dollars. 

A  generation  and  a  half  later,  nine  hundred  monasteries  were 
suppressed  in  Spain,  and  five  hundred  in  Portugal.  Twenty-two 
hundred  and  fifty-five  were  suppressed  in  Italy,  when  the  political 
states  of  that  country  were  unified.     All  these,  however,  made  a 

»To  illustrate  the  historic  parallel  referred  to  in  Chapter  VIII,  p.  355,  supra. 


406  APPENDIX. 

total  of  only  about  one-third  so  many  —  amid  national  European 
populations  exceeding  eighty  millions  —  as  Nisbet  reports  as  still 
flourishing  amid  a  population  little  larger  than  that  of  greater 
London  in  the  Burmah  of  to-day.  If  we  now  add  to  the  Burmese 
the  total  number  of  religious  houses  in  Siam,  Japan  and  the 
broad  heart  of  Asia,  it  is  evident  that  Asiatic  Buddhism  has 
made  the  Sangha  its  principal  feature,  while  in  comparison, 
European  monasticism  has  been  but  an  incident  in  the  advance 
of  Christianity. 

C.     Nirvana.' 

If  the  Buddhist  Nirvana  is  but  extinguishing  the  flames  of  pas- 
sion (Professor  Rhys  Davids,  in  the  Great  Religions  of  the 
World,  p.  38;  also  in  Buddhism,  pp.  Ill,  115),  is  it  not,  in  Pro- 
fessor John  Fiske's  phrase,  the  complete  quiescence  or  absolute 
zero  of  being? 

The  answer,  of  so  great  difficulty,  is  very  clearly  stated  by  Pro- 
fessor Davids: — the  concepts  that  one  may  be  forever  free  from 
delusion  and  sorrow,  and  that  a  new  being  is  formed  consisting 
of  certain  bodily  and  mental  qualities  in  the  five  aggregates  after 
the  old  karma  is  exhausted,  must  be  modified,  as  to  an  unending 
conscious  state,  by  the  transitory  nature  of  the  constituent  quali- 
ties singly  or  in  groups;  so  that  if  life  in  Nirvana  be  an  apparent 
exception  to  the  general  law  of  dissolution,  the  state  would  seem 
to  be  one  of  negative  rather  than  positive  happiness.  (Compare, 
in  their  order,  pages  149,  113,  111,  87-93,  and  the  Buddhist  saint, 
p.   104,  Buddhism.) 

T.  Sterling  Berry  ^Christianity  and  Buddhism,  pp.  87,  88.  Lon- 
don, 1890)  cites  three  passages  from  Max  Miiller's  writings  to- 
show  that  he  entertained  different  views  of  Nirvana  at  different 
times: —  (1)  Buddhists  and  Buddhist  Pilgrims,  p.  53  (2)  Pref- 
ace to  Buddhagosha's  Parables,  p.  40;  (3)  Translation  of  Dham,- 
mapada,  in  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  X:  9. 

To  the  erudite  Barth,  Nirvana  is  extinction  of  being.  Predi- 
cated of  a  state  of  perfect  calm,  in  which  all  passion  and  every 
movement  of  egoism  are  extinct,  it  is  in  this  sense  obvious  that 
it  can  be  attained  in  this  life;  but  it  is  so  used  metaphorically, 
the  condition  being  taken  for  Nirvana  itself.  From  all  we  know 
of  Buddhist  ontology,  the  state  can  only  be  provisional  and  must 
come  to  an  end,  and  perfection  consists  in  ceasing  to  exist.  From 
the  moment  of  death  the  individual  will  have  disappeared 
entirely  and  without  return.  Doctrinally  Buddhism  is  the  con- 
fession of  the  absolute  vanity  of  all  things,  and,  as  regards  the 

'Referring  to  Chapter  VI,  p.  284,  supra. 


NIRVANA.  407 

individual,   an   aspiration    after   non-existence. —  Tide    The   Reli- 
gions of  India,  pp.  79,  110,  113,  114.     London,  1882. 

Little  is  Itnown  by  Western  scholars  of  the  books  of  the  North- 
ern Buddhist  canon  (p.  IIG,  Davids'  Buddhism),  but  varying 
views  concerning  Nirvana  are  apparently  entertained,  from  abso- 
lute annihilation,  to  that  of  a  sensuous  heaven  held  to  by  certain 
sects  in  Japan.  (Compare  Professor  Douglas'  China,  pp.  325,  326.) 
Joseph  Neesima's  grandmother  was  led,  by  the  Buddhist  school 
to  which  she  belonged,  to  expect  to  enter  Nirvana,  as  a  state  of 
conscious  spiritual  bliss.  Tide  Hardy's  Story  of  Neesima.  "A 
good  action  done  in  this  world,"  it  is  said  in  the  books  of  the 
North,  "will  receive  its  reward  in  the  next;  even  as  the  water 
poured  at  the  root  of  a  tree  will  be  seen  aloft  in  the  fruit  or  the 
branches." 

President  Martin  states  that  in  China,  Nirvana  was  found  to 
be  too  subtle  an  idea  for  popular  contemplation.  And  it  is  doubt- 
less true,  that,  take  the  Buddhist  world  throughout,  aside  from 
the  monks,  the  popular  mind  does  not  deal  in  abstruse  matters 
and  make  metaphysical  distinctions,  and  it  is  probably  the  popu- 
lar impression  that  there  will  be  in  some  proper  sense  a  con- 
tinuous existence  after  the  whirling  cycles  of  transmigration 
cease,  and  that  Nirvana  is  a  higher  condition  of  life.  Alabaster's 
'Wheel  of  the  Law  says  that  Nirvana  is  held  by  the  Siamese  to 
be  a  state  of  comfort  without  care.     (Note  C,  Life  of  Buddha.) 

Save  from  a  scholastic  point  of  view,  the  interpretation  is  of 
less  practical  importance,  since,  of  record,  only  two  laymen  are 
reported  to  have  attained  Nirvana,  and  only  one  or  two  mendi- 
cants later  than  Gautama;  at  the  present  time  such  an  event 
being  unheard  of  (p.  125,  Davids'  Buddhism).  The  Goddess  of 
Mercy,  whose  worship  is  so  popular  in  the  Orient,  is  said  to  have 
reached  the  verge  of  Nirvana;  she  chose,  however,  not  to  enter, 
but  to  remain  with  such  as  still  abide  in  this  world  of  change  to 
protect  them  in  their  self-contending  throughout  their  varying 
lives  of  transmigration. —  Tide  Lore  of  Cathay,  p.  187. 

To  the  writer  it  appears  to  be  in  no  degree  probable  that  Gau- 
tama meant  to  predicate  extinction  of  being  in  promising  Nir- 
vana. His  whole  theory  was  to  the  effect  that  there  is  a  world 
cf  absolute  being,  and  that  this  evil  world  with  its  distressing 
changes  is  but  a  preparation  for  attaining  the  absolute  perfec- 
tion of  that  superior  world,  and  that  the  perfected  man  is 
rewarded  by  flight  from  this  evil  world  to  the  real  world  —  the 
ideal  world,  the  painless,  the  sinless. 

If  we  speak  of  the  cessation  of  consciousness,  is  not  the  term 
used  in  a  technical  Oriental  sense,  that  differs  from  what  an 
Occidental  means  by  consciousness? 


408  KARMA. 

Warren,  in  his  altogether  admirable  studies  upon  Buddhism, 
naively  states  that  a  large  part  of  the  pleasure  he  experienced 
in  the  study  of  Buddhism  arose  from  "the  strangeness  of  the 
intellectual  landscape."  From  this  point  of  view,  Nirvana  is  a 
topic  of  unceasing  interest.  It  can,  says  Warren,  be  only  under- 
stood by  a  thorough  comprehension  of  the  philosophy  of  which 
it  is  the  climax.  "When  the  fire  of  lust  is  extinct,  that  is  Nir- 
vana; when  pride,  false  belief,  and  all  other  passions  and  tor- 
ments are  extinct,  that  is  Nirvana."  It  is  a  release  from  the 
miseries  of  rebirth, — "the  abode  of  peace."  "The  incomparable 
security  of  a  Nirvana  free  from  corruption,"  is  the  phraseology 
often  repeated.  "Our  deliverance  is  unshakable;  this  is  our  last 
existence;  no  more  shall  we  be  born  again."  Of  the  priest,  who 
has  entered  on  the  cessation  of  perception  and  sensation,  it  is 
said  that  the  bodily  karma,  vocal  and  mental  karma,  have  ceased 
and  become  quieted,  but  vitality  has  not  become  exhausted  and 
the  senses  have  not  broken  up.  Vide  Buddhism  in  Translations 
(from  the  Pali  writings  of  Ceylon  and  Burmah),  Vol.  Ill,  Har- 
vard Oriental  Series,  in  this  order  of  references:  pp.  283-4,  59, 
333,  346,  389. 

D.     Kaema.* 

Once  assuming  the  doctrine  of  transmigration  —  to  give  an 
opportunity  for  moral  perfection, —  while  there  is,  in  the  Buddhist 
mode  of  thought,  no  Ego,  yet  it  would  seem  that  one's  character, 
or  karma  as  it  is  called,  is  to  the  Buddhist  what  Ego  is  to  the 
Brahman  or  the  man  of  the  West. 

This  character,  or  karma,  must  be  constantly  re-embodied,  until 
it  is  finally  perfected.  Does  not  this  Buddhist  expression  in  effect 
mean  what  Brahmanism  means,  when  it  speaks  of  the  Ego  as 
constantly  reborn  until  perfected? 

In  this  way,  karma  expresses  that  which  a  man  inherits  from 
himself  —  he  having  been  in  Buddhist  philosophy  not  an  Ego  but 
a  character  —  in  some  previous  state  of  existence. 

Hinduism  says,  I  am  reborn;  Buddhism  says,  my  character  is 
reborn. 

In  Western  philosophy  the  thinker  distinguishes  between  the 
Ego  and  the  marks  made  upon  the  Ego  by  his  deeds  —  distin- 
guishes between  himself  and  his  character. 

» To  illustrate  note  upon  page  245,  supra. 


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LOS  ANGELES 
LIBRARY 


BL75     Tenney  - 
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social  progress, 


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BL75 
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